Everything I Know About YOUR Fulbright Chances

NEW: The Creative Art of Proposals: How to Write Kick-Ass Language That Gets Your Work Funded, Published, And All Loved Up! 21 easy e-lessons to help you clarify your idea and write a winning proposal.

 

Dear smartypants,

Guess what, I think Uncle Sam wants to pay YOU to come to India! Or vice versa!

So I was just at the big Fulbright mid-fellowship shindig in Goa, where all the U.S. scholars based in these parts gathered in order to drink cocktails by the pool, um, I mean, to share the results of our extremely serious and significant projects. Except for the afternoon beach tour and the selection of three desserts at every meal and the hotel spa, it was all work, work, work!

On the first morning, the senior program officer from the U.S State Department appealed to us to recruit applicants. She said they are “desperately seeking” future Fulbrighters.

Funding has tripled in the last few years in this region. In 2008, 46 Fulbrighters came to India; next year, it’ll be 150. Meanwhile, the number of applicants is what it’s always been. Similar expansion of funding for Indians to do projects in the U.S. has taken place. Your odds right now are better than they’ve ever been.

That means you have a better chance now than ever to get the government to fund your project in India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, or Turkmenistan. (Not Absurdistan, though.) Want to go to more than one country? You can apply for a regional fellowship, too.

OR, if you’re a citizen of India or one of those other countries and want to propose a project in the United States, this is also a great time.

So if you think you would like to do a project overseas for 2 months or more, check out the Fulbrights. Awards are given to 8,000 Americans a year in 150 countries, in almost every field of endeavor, and an equal number of foreign scholars get to travel to America to study or teach.  I’m going to focus in this blog post on India, because that’s what I know the most about, but hope there will be some useful information for people applying to other countries too.

I’m not an expert and there’s a lot of complicated information, different deadlines, etc., so you will definitely need to do your own homework. But I’m hoping this post will be helpful as a starting point and as encouragement.

Whoa, so many Fulbright websites! Where do I start?

I know, right? OK, here:

If you’re a U.S. citizen student or recent graduate, start here.

If you’re a U.S. citizen who is a working artist, professional, or faculty member, you’re a “Scholar” in Fulbright terms; start here. This is what I am now. If you want the exact one I applied to, it’s the Core Program research scholar in India. [NOTE ADDED 2014: The program has changed and the best fit for writers/artists/professionals in India is now the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award (All Disciplines).]

If you live outside the US, you might be eligible for a Fulbright to come to the US temporarily. Students, start here.  Faculty, professionals, working artists, again you are Scholars so start here.  If you could teach a foreign language to students in the United States, start here.

Not sure which level to go for? The Scholar level carries significantly more money. The student/recent graduate level has requirements for timing and degrees. See which one fits you best. Don’t assume the student level will be less competitive; many universities have well-oiled machines helping their students to apply for these fellowships, so you might have just as good a chance applying as a Scholar.

For India-specific information, either as an Indian or as an American, there is also good info on the website of the organization that administers the India programs: click here.

Once you’re inside the proper site, look for the searchable database. You can search by country, academic discipline, etc.

How long will the application take me?

I don’t know because there are so many different programs.

For the one I applied to, the requirements were relatively simple: a five-page project proposal, CV, bibliography, and three letters of recommendation.

For students, it’s a more complicated process and requires contact with institutions overseas as well.

Can an artist get a Fulbright? Don’t you have to be an academic?

There are sculptors, musicians, filmmakers, visual artists, and writers among the current Fulbrighters. You do not have to have a faculty position at home (I don’t), but you will be assigned an academic affiliation in your host country.

What exactly does Fulbright fund?

The amount and type of funding really varies depending on the country, the exact award, and your level (student or scholar, research or teaching, etc.).

In general there are research awards, lecturing awards, and combined research/lecturing awards.

Some countries allow any academic discipline (like India) while others are very specific in what skills/areas they want.

Generally there is a monthly amount for living and research expenses, plus some special supplements for other categories. If you have dependents, they can also travel with you and you get a stipend for them.

How do I write a strong application?

• Check out the Fulbright webinars on this topic, as well as country-specific seminars. If you are near a university, the campus may also have Fulbright workshops around this time of year.

• Remember that this a government-funded program that requires the approval of all the countries you plan to visit. It’s not going to support you in researching your master plan to overthrow the nation-state. In India, certain topics (such as Naxalites) and geographic areas (such as Kashmir) are off-limits. You are still your awesome revolutionary self, but do figure out what the taboos are for your countries and avoid them.

• Also keep in mind the purpose of the Fulbright is to promote mutual understanding. If you get an award, you will hear the words “cultural ambassador” ad nauseum. Don’t patronize, but if you can build some language into your proposal about how your project will further the cause of intercultural understanding, it’ll probably go over well.

• Have a clear, focused, cohesive project for either research, teaching, or both. Be really clear about your topic, methods, and outcomes. Know as much as possible about the country where you want to go, and about other people doing work in your area of study.

• Start early. Talk to people about your project and get feedback. Call the program officer assigned to your area (listed on the websites above); they are super approachable, and part of their job is to help you craft a strong application. You can brainstorm ideas or get feedback on your idea from the program officer. Start approaching people for your letters of recommendation now. If you need an invitation from overseas, start researching and asking around for contacts now; send a polite request. When they say yes, send a draft of the letter of invitation that you’d like them to write (sign).

• Write and rewrite your drafts. This is kind of “duh,” but duh. Write a draft. Get feedback. Rewrite it. Then do it again. Get people to read your drafts. (Maybe a pro coach?) And don’t do it at the last minute.

• Browse current projects going on in the country where you’d like to apply. If you aren’t sure where to find that information, ask your area program officer. See 2010-11 US scholars in India here.

• Read the fine print. Yes, there’s a lot of it. Read it.

• Find other people in your field who have successfully obtained Fulbrights and ask if they wouldn’t mind sharing their applications as samples. This was the single most helpful thing that people did for me, because it helped me see how to frame my ideas into a successful proposal.

Who should write my letters? Will you write one?

Your three letter writers should (a) know your work intimately and (b) be experts in your field. If they are former Fulbrighters, that can be helpful, too. Try to get a good mix of people who can vouch for different aspects of your qualifications. You should send them a draft of your proposal early on, give them plenty of lead time, and tell them what you want them to say.

Some awards require you to have a letter of invitation from an academic institution in your host country. Even if this isn’t required, it may strengthen your application to show that you have connections abroad who support your project. Again, start early.

You may find that you need to supply a draft letter to your recommenders. If so, highlight your accomplishments and the worthiness, originality, and significance of your project. Mention how they know you and your work. Try not to be overly modest or overly effusive. Get a friend to read it for tone if you need an objective point of view.

I probably won’t write you a letter. Except for those of you who already know I will. 🙂

I don’t have a PhD. Can I still apply?

Yes. I only have a bachelor’s degree. Each country sets its own requirements and they can vary. For some awards,  you need a “terminal degree” in your field OR the professional equivalent. I argued, successfully, that all my writing and research experience added up to the equivalent of an MFA or PhD, and I asked my letter writers to emphasize this point as well. It worked.

I have more questions for you!

Great! Please ask them in the comments area, and I’ll try to answer for everyone’s benefit.

Will you read my proposal and give me advice?

Yes! Please take a peek at my coaching page and rate sheet, and let me know if you’d like to schedule some time.

A great, inexpensive way to get help preparing your proposal is to take my e-course, The Creative Art of Proposals: How to Write Kick-Ass Language That Gets Your Work Funded, Published, And All Loved Up. I give you 21 clear, direct lessons for creating language with SPARK. Former students have received grants, residencies, and fellowships, including Fulbrights. You can even add on a discounted private session with me. All the fabulous info is right here.

Also, if you’d like to see my Fulbright proposal as a sample, please email me and I’ll send it to you.

 

Fulbrighters hard at work:
Fulbright Distinguished Fellow Paul Joseph and international whistling champion Linda Schiffman stopped by my Chennai book reading, co-sponsored by USIEF

Immigration and its fictions

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Mary Ellen Hannibal, an interviewer for The Readers Review, asked me an intriguing question.

MEH: I have heard you draw parallels between the language around immigration issues today and those of eras we consider far more recidivist. What would be a healthy immigration policy, in your view?

MH: I’m a poet, not a policy wonk, and as Audre Lorde said, “Poetry is not only dream and vision… It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears.” When the Arizona bill passed in May, there was an outpouring of poetry and so I made an offering as well.

I’m intrigued by your word “healthy,” which is an interesting way to approach immigration policy. To extend the metaphor, we can create a state of health only by first arriving an accurate diagnosis of the illness. And we don’t have that diagnosis.

It’s difficult for me to take seriously the assumptions from which every current discussion of U.S. immigration policy proceeds. The very existence of nation-states, of borders that can or should be enforced—all these seem to me fictions. Powerful ones, for sure, but I don’t know why we must take them so very seriously and behave as if we must defend them at all odds.

And the contradictions in every position also puzzle me. If you really do believe in the free market, free trade, and all that, why not let people go where they will, where there is need and demand for their skills? Instead we now have fake free trade, where capital is allowed to move across borders, but people aren’t. People in poor countries from which capital is being sucked out by Western multinational companies have to risk their lives to get to the Western nations where their money has already gone, so that they can work terrible unhealthy jobs that the citizens of those countries don’t want to do, to try to get a little of that money back and send it home to their children and elders via remittances.

Does this system really make any sense to anyone?

Almost every suburb in the United States is filled with domestic workers, gardeners, and construction day workers who come from somewhere else “illegally.” Almost every strawberry or leaf of lettuce relies on this economy that is not supposed to exist, that we claim we don’t want yet somehow just can’t seem to get rid of.

And at the same time we’re exporting a Hollywood vision of America, a steady stream of propaganda that advertises a life of luxury that isn’t even accessible to many people who work 40 hours a week in this country.

America is like that stereotypically beautiful cruel blonde who wants everybody to want her, just so that she can reject them.

I suppose a healthy immigration policy would begin by acknowledging how many fictions are involved in our current perceptions, and acknowledging that our so-called immigration problem is not really the disease. It’s one symptom of the much larger disease of corporate globalization.

A healthy policy might also begin by acknowledging that this is a nation of illegal immigrants, that all of the land we call the United States of America has been stolen or claimed by violence or trickery from other peoples, and that as the most prosperous nation in the world, we might consider being a little more generous with our borders, and a little less generous in exporting our soldiers and our weapons.

And a healthy immigration policy would have as its end goal an open-door, welcoming policy. We’d look at what steps we need to take toward that, and come up with a phased plan that is consistent with a responsible (not “free”) international trade policy, and that is aimed at inviting people in, transitioning them into healthy work as part of healthy communities, rather than keeping them out with weapons and barbed wire.

I suppose that makes me, in the words of Fox News, an “open-borders extremist.” I think it’s actually inevitable. Our borders are and have always been open, permeable, because they are fictions. Grasses, oil spills, coyotes, environmental changes have no respect for little white lines on a piece of paper. All empires rise and fall, so why do we believe the American empire is immune to history? One way or another, sooner or later, borders will collapse.

We can choose to acknowledge and plan for that and create graceful transitions, in a phased way that does not create radical suffering on either side of the so-called borders.

Or we can continue to cling to our fictions.

Click here to read the entire interview.

Writing from the Chakras

chakra-meditation-spiral“Whatever just happened, it was perfect.”

I love my yoga teacher Skeeter Barker because she’s always coming up with this kind of amazing statement. She usually says it just after we’ve done something extra-difficult or extra-weird, involving the left foot up in the air while the right arm is tucked under the something-something, and I’m sure I’ve done it terribly wrong…

until Skeeter, with her sweet British accent, says something like, “Now lift up the corners of your thighs, and the outer ribs, oh, and don’t forget to lift up the corners of your mouth, too.”  Then I find I’m actually smiling as I challenge my body to do something that it has never, in its 38 years, attempted to do before.

This is how I feel about writing, too.

I struggled a lot with writers’ block in the process of writing my book Leaving India; so many critical voices and doubts crowded in that it took me literally years to find my way.  That struggle taught me how to loosen up, allow mistakes, allow everything.  Now I know that a good writing session is just another kind of yoga:  I feel myself open up, I let the energies flow through me, and I try not to get attached to any specific posture or product.

So I’m super excited to be co-teaching a workshop, called Writing from the Chakras, with Skeeter. She’ll guide the asanas, I’ll guide the writing games, and you’ll be there with us, right? (1:30pm-4pm Saturday May 15, San Francisco; register here.)

And whatever happens, between you and your chakras and your notebook and the rest of us and our chakras and our notebooks … don’t worry.  It’ll be just perfect.

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WRITING FROM THE CHAKRAS
A Spiral Community Workshop
Saturday, May 15
1:30 – 4pm
with Minal Hajratwala & Skeeter Barker

This fun, relaxed 2.5 hour workshop is designed to open up the chakras through yoga asana and breath, leading to an unleashing of your creativity onto paper. No previous yoga or writing experience necessary. We will be exploring yoga asana as a method for developing a body-based approach to writing, and using writing exercises as another kind of expression. Creative writing doesn’t have to be any more complicated than breathing, so if you can breathe from your core, then you can also write from your core, revealing your truth and creativity. We will be exploring and looking into the specific energies of each chakra through asana, and discover what kind of writing comes from each one.

n589476453_1027565_1757Skeeter has been teaching for five lovely years. She has studied with Katchie Ananda, Noah Maze and has done trainings with John Friend, Desiree Rumbaugh and Jim Bernaert. Skeeter very much enjoys the emotional evolution that comes from the practice of Anusara yoga. She honors the peaceful warrior nature that is uniquely revealed in each of us, through this journey called yoga. Skeeter’s purpose is to create a safe space for all students to arrive on their mat, practice the beautiful art of unfoldment and connect to true authentic self. She welcomes you to your mat, however you find yourself there.

4857_1176080125291_1326727716_463235_2202076_sMinal is the author of Leaving India: My Family’s Journey From Five Villages to Five Continents (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), which has been called “incomparable” by Alice Walker and “searingly honest” by the Washington Post. The book won a California Book Award (Silver, Nonfiction) and is currently shortlisted for the Saroyan International Writing Prize and a Lambda Literary Award. A former journalist, she spent seven years researching and writing the book, traveling the world to interview more than seventy-five members of her extended family. She is also a poet and performer whose own creative processes have benefited greatly from yoga, meditation, and somatic practices. In 2010 she will be moving to India for nine months as a Fulbright Senior Scholar.

Fee: $20
Location: Yoga Kula, 3030A 16th St, San Francisco, CA 94103
Register online at
www.yogakula.com or by calling (415) 934-0000

Debunking the ‘poor author’ myth

As my nearest and dearest know, I’m the most annoying person to sit near while trying to read a newspaper. I obviously haven’t gotten over my past life as a daily newspaper journalist, because more things irritate me per page than you would think possible.

So, as an experiment, I’m going to start using this blog for some media criticism.  Feel free to let me know what you think, and crit my crits (ooh that sounds kind of naughty) if you like!

This week the Washington Post ran an article headlined, “On Web, A Most Novel Approach: With Promotion Money Tight, Authors Take to Online Sites To Toot Their Own Horns.” (Thanks to Ivan Roman for bringing the article to my attention via his Facebook page.)

As a first-time author who’s been tooting my own horn online all year, I clicked on the link with interest.

But the opening anecdote completely undermines the article’s raison d’être.  (I’m not going to repeat it all here, but go browse the article if you want, then come back and find out why it registered on my annoyance-meter.)

The point of the article is that novice authors, shut out of “old-school staples of book promotion,” are turning to the Web, and the author in the lead is supposed to be an example of how successful that can be.  You, too, can become a bestseller with just a YouTube video and books sold out of the trunk of your car!

The truth is that many, if not most, newbie authors who’ve had a book come out in the last couple of years have done exactly the same things as “poor Kelly Corrigan”: homemade book trailer, self-funded tour, book parties organized by friends, etc. I had a lot of support from my publisher, and even then, I’ve done most of those things too.  I’m sure Ms. Corrigan’s book is wonderful and she worked very hard, but hand-selling like that only gets so many copies sold.

What really sold her 300,000-and-counting copies was this, tucked into the third paragraph of the story and never mentioned again:

“Her agent helped get her on one network television morning show.”

Huh. Turns out Ms. Corrigan isn’t a marginalized outsider author at all; she’s an incredibly lucky one with a great agent and a connection to network television! The media follow each other, and Ms. Corrigan must have done wonderfully on TV, so I have no doubt that that single appearance snowballed to other mass media coverage — which is still really the only way to reach hundreds of thousands of potential readers.

Coincidentally, the mass media part of the story is what the newspaper writer (being part of it) missed. In this case the media’s pack mentality was really great for the writer, so hooray for the pack!

But let’s not attribute her book’s phenomenal sales to the magic of the interweb, please.

That’s like writing about how the Beatles got famous because they worked so hard on their cute haircuts, and oh yes, they just happened to turn up on The Ed Sullivan Show at some point, too.

Creative Process

I always find it fascinating to see how other artists create their work. Here are three things that have inspired me recently.
(If you’re reading this on Facebook or elsewhere and can’t see the videos, please go to my blog and it’ll all be clear.)

• A short video of cartoonist Alison Bechdel talking about how she created each scene in her beautiful graphic novel Fun Home (which you should read immediately, if you haven’t already done so). Her process is simply amazing:

• A thoughtful blog post by author Farai Chideya (you may have heard her on NPR) on how she wrote her rock musician novel Kiss the Sky:

I was finally willing to take my life “off track” … in order to accomplish my dream. [Click here to continue reading.]


• My friend Canyon Sam describing the many years of exploration, travel, rejection letters, and rewrites that it took for her to complete her upcoming nonfiction book, Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History, a book you’re going to be hearing a lot more about:

So to anyone dreaming of or working on a big project… these women did it, and you can do it too!

Help for writers

The Book Writing & Publishing Blueprint

Building the Buzz: Marketing Ourselves As Artists

This is a marketing resource list for writers/performers, particularly those of South Asian descent. It was created for the “Building Our Buzz” workshop at the Kriti Festival, organized by DesiLit in Chicago, June 10-14, 2009. I instigated this panel because, as I said in an email to the participants:

I would like to make this a really productive brainstorming session, as marketing is a huge issue that all of us work on all the time and I think we can really help each other as well as the attendees. I’m envisioning a session where people walk away jazzed about marketing their own work, with ideas on how to collaborate, knowledge to use and pass on to their own artistic communities, etc. I am assuming we all have a lot of ideas to share. Personally, I know I sometimes struggle with making the marketing part of being an artist feel fun and not “icky,” so I’m excited to share this conversation with you all.

We had a great conversation, which resulted in tons of ideas and resources. The list below reflects our collective wisdom and is divided into two parts: Resources and Strategies/Ideas.

If you want to join the brainstorming with other ideas and resources, please do so as a comment to this post! Thank you!

Building the Buzz:

Marketing Ourselves as Artists

PANEL DESCRIPTION: Writers and artists in a variety of genres brainstorm methods for marketing themselves and their work, from doing traditional events, to hiring help, to public speaking, headshots, Twittering, ‘virtual’ book touring, and more. With so many new South Asian American “creatives” emerging, how do you set yourself apart from the crowd — or collaborate to give everyone maximum exposure?

The panelists:

Minal Hajratwala (moderator), writer
Shilpa Agarwal, writer
Sonal Shah, actor
Farha Hasan, writer/librarian
Nitin Deckha, writer
Rachna Vohra, writer/spoken word artist

Resources

Publications

The Savvy Author’s Guide to Book Publicity by Lisa Warren

Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson

Poets & Writers magazine: extensive listings, calls for submission, all writing genres

Poetry Flash quarterly newspaper: extensive West Coast listings, calls for submission, mostly for poets

Websites

www.desilit.org:  US-based organization that works to build support for South Asian and diaspora writers

South Asian Journalists Association Forum: Recent S Asian authors blog about putting out their books

South Asian Artists Collective: Community where you can create a profile and share work

South Asian Women’s Creative Collective: active, NY-based community of artists of all disciplines

South Asian Sisters: SF Bay Area-based community of writers/performers, puts on annual Yoni Ki Baat show

Book sites: moorishgirl, maud newton, bookslut

Sampling of South Asian communities/sites: SepiaMutinyLiterarySafariSouth Asian Journalists Association, SiliconIndia.comLokvani.comSOUTHASIA-Online.comOutofIndia.netAsia Pacific Artsdesiparty.comdesiclub.comsulekha.comtrikone.orgIndiaAbroad.com

Social Networks

These are websites where you sign up, create a profile, get followers/friends, list events, etc:

goodreads.com: readers say what books they love; authors get special level of access to create profiles, offer book giveaways, etc

librarything.com: goes to librarians and library patrons

pw.org: Poets & Writers site, need certain # of publications to be listed

Amazon Author Central: for authors with books being sold thru Amazon to create profile, upload blog entry, etc

booktour.com: event listings that are then linked into local newspaper web listings and to your book’s Amazon.com page

kahanimovement.com: Indo-American video storytelling, good for posting book trailers, promo videos, personal videos

facebook: Read The Facebook Marketing Toolbox

twitter.com:  examples of how we’re using it: @desilit, @sonalbshah, @minalh

Strategies/Ideas

Establishing a web presence

• Have your own website and update it OFTEN. If you’re a performer, always have your upcoming shows; if you’re a writer, your latest published work; if you’re an artist, your latest pieces or gallery showings, etc.  Make sure the links track, i.e. links to other publications etc.
• Set up author’s pages in other sites – bookstores, writers’ organizations (see social networking resources above).
• Podcast or get yourself interviewed on someone else’s podcast.
• Publish in ezines or online literary journals: One of the benefit to this type of forum is that your name is more likely to come up in a google search than with a traditional hardcopy journal.
• Online Forms: I put a collection of short stories on the apple app store for iphone/ipod and within a couple months I got 30,000 downloads worldwide without any kind of marketing or promotion. Another online forum to showcase your work is Scribd. (Farha)
• Put up a short story or e-book on Kindle.
• Track stats such as “bounce rate” – how long does a person stay on your site before moving on?
• Change your outgoing email so that your website shows up in your signature line for everyone you communicate with.

Blogging tips

• Blogging can be useful either as an addition to a website or an alternative to one. But if you use a blog to replace a website, then you should have your information on a panel to the side, not just postings about your thought of the day. Use it to advertise your work, not just to chat to whoever’s reading!
• Go on a “virtual” book tour by guest-blogging for 30 days; see amazing example from Shaila Abdullah
• Pull people to your site by interviewing other authors on your blog; see examples at http://www.shailaabdullah.com/blog.html
• I was an electronic writer-in-residence at www.openbooktoronto.com for the month of October 2008 – I kept a blog on this, literary and interesting, before my book came out (Nitin).
• Keeping up a blog of events/reviews/interviews: http://shilpaagarwal.com/blog/
• Set up RSS and Share links to your blog so that others can follow you easily: http://www.minalhajratwala.com/blog (see the Share buttons to the right)
• Feed your blog directly into Facebook, Amazon, etc.  Once you set it up, it updates automatically each time you post a new blog entry.
• Post portions of work in progress etc. (beware of copyright issues, some publishers may not want to publish if it’s been already published, even on your own blog.)
• Use keywords to draw folks in w/current events, organizations, etc if you are blogging on timely information.
• Link from your website to blog and vice versa.
• Reach out to the big South Asian blogs such as Sepia Mutiny, etc.; read their submission/suggestion guidelines.

Media

• college/university radio: not so much in the summer, but in the fall/winter – there’s usually someone who likes to interview writers in his/her spoken word program.
• ethnic media – they are often hungry for stories to cover; there is growing interest in authors/writers. It’s easy to place an article especially if you will write for free.
• don’t forget the aunties and uncles: an uncle who edits a religious newsletter included an extensive blurb about my book in a recent issue – it’s distributed free (in my case) at mandirs around Toronto. (Nitin)
• Get on a morning talk show, especially on a controversial topic.
• Press releases: Become your own publicist, set up gmail account as your own publicist to email press release to various press address. Blogs, newspapers, morning shows, call/pretend you’re a publicist, finding out contact name and who to email, be persistent.
• PERSISTENCE: Sending a hard copy, then calling, then emailing, then repeating that process again and again.  One every week until they call.  Pick 10 newspapers and submit to them every week to get an article.
• BE SEEN: Continue to perform at open mics, do as many red carpets (with press) as possible, do staged readings, go see plays/improv/sketch all of the time.  Snail Mail: People are using internet more and more and while that is convenient, snail mailing is still a great (yes more expensive) method (less people are doing).
• Write op-eds and/or let people know you are available as an expert source on timely news stories related to your book— or not. Any article you get published should have your book title and website link in the credit line.

EVENTS

• Driving up the west coast (on my own dime) and doing readings (Shilpa)
• Have my publisher give away marketing copies to orgs I’m involved with for silent auctions, banquet raffles, etc (Minal)
• Co-promoting with another (artistic) event: for example, I am doing a reading and book signing as part of a launch of contemporary Indian art in a gallery space later in the summer (Nitin)
• Mixers: I partnered with a South Asian web-based entity in Toronto and did a reading, Q and A at a local restaurant. I ‘donated’ books which were sold to attendees, almost all of whom would not necessarily have attended a traditional launch …  There are a lot of people who don’t necessarily read but who could read; readers & future readers. (Nitin)
• “melas” – these abound all over the place, especially in the summer. Some have artistic performances that even pay its performers!
• setting up readings in places where you’re already planning to visit for fun/family
• Joint readings with other authors
• Cross-collaborate – readings with singers/dancers

Book clubs

• book clubs: offer to come do an author’s visit – this is a potentially good audience because they actually buy books
• putting together a reading guide for book clubs and making myself available to phone in for discussions (Shilpa): http://hauntingbombay.com/reading-guide.htm

SCHMOOZING/COLLABORATION

• Business card: It may sound funny for an artist or writer to have a business card, but you’d be surprised – that’s how people will remember you. Especially when you’re meeting non-South Asians who may have a hard time remembering your name (Rachna… could you repeat that? Rachna… oh.)
• Proactivity: If you’re at an event, take people’s contact information and follow up with them instead of waiting for them to follow up with you.
• Attending launches and book readings of other writers, especially ones that you do not know – usually in the milling around people after a reading, you  can mingle with other readers who may be interested, meet someone in the media who hasn’t heard about your work…
• Talking to other authors and exchanging ideas
• Networking outside the literary community: Mainstream networking groups especially women or South Asian women have been a tremendous source of leads
• Networks: Use what you are. If you are a woman, go to women-centered events; if you are South Asian, tap into South Asian networking events; if you have a poem about rape, bring it to rape-prevention organizations/meetings; etc. Everything you are and everything you write/paint/dance about can be used.
• Have a signup list at your events, get email addresses so people can join your mailing list.

THINGS YOU CAN PAY FOR

(or try to learn yourself or get someone to do for free)

• Web design
• Postcards/bookmarks for your book.
• Video book trailer: samples: Haunting Bombay (fiction), Leaving India: My Family’s Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents (nonfiction), Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History (nonfiction)
• Publicist
• Speaking agent/agency
• http://www.cyberprbooks.com/ : An online marketing service that connects bloggers with books (has a South Asian staff member)
• Constant Contact e-newsletter : stores addresses and gives you templates for creating your own mailings. Free option and monthly paid service option.

FOR ACTORS/PERFORMERS  (from Sonal Shah)

• An actor is/should always be marketing.
• Headshots-What makes a good headshot
• Marketing to theatres: In my situation, at first it was checking all chicago publications (performink, The Reader, An Actor’s Guide to Chicago) to find theatres to send my headshot to- marketing to theatres.
• Marketing to agents: marketing to agents to get an agent.
• LA Connection: marketing to an agent that has connections in LA.
• SAG: Get a sag card before moving to LA.
• LA Casting Directors/managers: arriving in Los Angeles and marketing to Casting Directors (mailings, emails, workshops, dropping off materials in person).
• Websites: Registering/creating accounts for all actor-related websites (Casting Networks, Casting Frontier, Actors Access/Breakdown Services, Now Casting, iactor, etc).
• Current Marketing: Now (post “Scrubs”) my marketing has changed to be geared towards Casting Directors as well as PRESS.
• Comedians should go through program at UCB, IO, Second City, or Groundlings

MARKETING GENERAL

• BRANDING:  Finding your niche (i.e. Sonal Shah, female Indian comedian) and market yourself from that perspective.
• Hard Materials to always have- Business Cards, Headshots, Cover Letters, Postcards/Fliers
• Key to a good headshot: Find a good photographer, get a photo where your eyes are the most important detail, you’re connecting with whoever is looking at your photo, natural, organic, honest. Convey you and your truth and honesty through your portrait.
• Be a photography model for students, look on craigslist for listings to get  cheap/free headshots.
*
Late addition: Instructions for a Do-It-Yourself Book Tour

To-do lists … Part 2: Quest for Solutions

(Start with Part 1 here, if you want)

Part 2:  Quest for Solutions

In Which Our Heroine Searches the World (Wide Web) and Shares What She Finds.

Good news: There are tons of options out there, so it should be easy to find something that works for almost any need.

My criteria again: I want something that is

• free or very low cost
• groups to-do items in categories
• assigns due dates/deadlines
• has priority levels, preferably visual
• lets me estimate how much time each task will take
• has easy integration into daily life, email/calendar
• can be worked on online or offline
• is syncable to ipod Touch
• is easy to use
• and did I mention free or nearly free?

Yep, I am one tough cupcake.  So here’s what I tried.

Task List from Google Labs

Because I’m a dedicated gmail and google calendar user, I was excited to try this brand-new feature, just launched in December 2008.

Setup and learning curve: assuming you already have gmail, 5 to 15 minutes.

Pros: Integration integration integration!

• I *love* having my to-dos be right in my gmail window, which is the web page I look at dozens of times a day.  I can choose whether to have the list be subtle, down the left-hand column along with the Chat and Label areas, or more in-my-face, popped up on the bottom right like a live chat.
• It’s very easy to click on an email and turn it into a “task,” which then shows up in the Task List by the subject line of the email, and also has a link back to the email itself, even if I’ve already archived the email.
• Basic task creation is nice, simple, easy and intuitive to use.

Cons: Key features missing.

• I so wish this could be integrated with google calendar and not just gmail.  You can set a due date (though it’s kind of hidden, so at first I thought you couldn’t), but there is no way to link the due date to your google calendar, which just seems silly.
• More suitable for a few items than for dozens; it’s just too unwieldy to put everything into one big long list.  You can make subcategories, sort of, by indenting; and you can set priorities, sort of, by moving items up and down the list.  But not really.
• The interface is kind of tiny and I kept having the task and the due-date calendar overlap so that I couldn’t actually make it work. Plus you can’t see your other tasks while you’re creating a due date for a new task, which I need to do in order to see when I have time for the new task. Very fidgety.

Bottom line: I’m keeping it installed, and I am using it as a kind of extra flagging system for emails that need action, or things I remember while I’m in my email. If you love gmail and you’re not trying to do much project management via your to-do list, it might work for you. But for my overall needs, it’s not sufficient.

~~

So then I surfed around and quickly found Brian Benziger’s 25 To Do Lists To Stay Productive, which is a fabulous starting place.  I agree with most of his notes but his list is from 2006, so a couple of the lists that he lists (say wha? yeah, I said the lists that he lists) are no longer extant, while others have been developed and now do much more. Many of these, like the popular Ta-Da, were great in and of themselves but still too simple for my confused, I mean complex, needs. (You might like ’em though, so do check out Brian’s list.)  Brian led me to…

Rough Underbelly

Setup and learning curve: 10 to 15 minutes; requires registration.

Pros: Very fun!  Makes work into a game.

• You assign 1 to 10 “points” to each task.  You can use either their system (“billable” work or getting new business gets you 10 points, whereas maintaining a professional relationship gets you 1 point) or you can make up your own mental list about how you assign value to your tasks.  When you finish a task, you “get” the points.  Then you get to see a cute little line graph showing you how awesomely productive you were today.  Fun!
• Also has a nice little timer, so if you keep it onscreen as you work through your tasks, you can see how long you are taking on each task.

Cons:

• Can’t categorize tasks (other than by the number of points assigned). I need categories, cuz I can’t wrap my brain around assigning relative importance to items in diverse areas of my life. Is “buy cat food” worth more or fewer points than “write pitch letter to Terry Gross”?  I’d hate to see my cat and my publicist battle that one out.
• Again, no due dates.

Bottom line: Excellent for what it is, a productivity booster for your one-person small business or single project. Not for multifunctional me.

~~

Rough Underbelly is based on, and led me to, the Printable CEO, where someone even more obsessive than me has created a bunch of download-and-print productivity forms. They are designed for you to keep next to you as you work.  I can’t really review them because I haven’t used it yet, but it’s intriguing enough to mention.  I will try out the Emergent Task Planner at some point, I think, which is billed as  “realistic” daily planner.  Yes, that IS what I need.  It takes a little time to click around the site and understand what the different tools are and how to use them, but he has a neat approach that basically involves turning your day into 15-minute chunks of time and then accomplishing things bit by bit, which makes total fabulous sense.

~~

Back at Brian’s top-25 list, I tried a few more things and then landed at:

Remember The Milk

Setup and learning curve: 10 to 30 minutes; requires registration; more to explore after that, if you want.

Pros: Lotsa functions, integration … task-list heaven.  I’ve already set it as my home page.

• At the free level, this site lets me input basically everything I was looking for: tasks, categories, due dates, visual priority levels (1,2,3), and how much time each task will take. Hoorah!
• I love that I can create several different lists. I can also create “tags” to group items across categories. For example, I’ve tagged items “phone” so that when I have a window of time to make phone calls, I can pull up “make hair appointment” and “call marketing person” even though those relate to different lists (Personal and Book).
• The “Location” feature lets you map your tasks geographically.  For me, I’ve started using it to identify things I’ll want to do in New York vs things I’ll want to do in DC. Then I can view all my New York items together, whether they involve personal friends or book tour business or something else.
• I love having lots of options for how I want to look at my tasks — just today’s tasks, for example, no matter what list I put them on.
• Calendaring:  A quick installation, and now my to-do items show up my google calendar, where tasks due on a particular day appear as a collapsible list at the top of the day with a little checkmark icon (sort of like the weather, if you’ve added a weather calendar).  I can edit the list, add tasks, and check them off as completed without leaving google calendar.
• Offline access: This is great for when I’ll be on an airplane trying to get work done, but without internet.
• Reminders: Option to get pinged in advance of tasks being due, via email, mobile, or your instant-message system.
• Upgrade to the $29 Pro level promises syncing with my iPod Touch (or iPhone).  Haven’t shelled out for this feature yet but if it works as well as everything else here, I’ll be delighted.

Cons:

• I have some quibbles with the user interface. For example, a checkmark in the empty box next to a task intuitively, to me, should mean the task is completed. Instead it means the task is “selected,” and I have to click on something else to actually mark it completed. Hmm. There are several things like this that are just slightly annoying.
• Several of the functions seem to only be accessible via keyboard shortcuts, with no menus. This makes the learning curve steeper than it needs to be, since it requires memorizing “m” for multiple-item selection mode, etc. Not quite as intuitive as it could be.

Bottom line: THE WINNER! Even though I’m a vegan, and not so crazy about looking at the little exploited cow icon every time I sign on (kidding… sort of…), Remember the Milk is the site for me. It’s so very functional that I’m willing to invest extra time in learning how to use it and overlook the slight awkwardness of the interface.  And I keep finding new uses for it.

And that is so much more than you ever wanted to know about to-do lists, isn’t it?

Next time, the million-dollar question:  Is all this actually making me  more productive????

To-do lists … Part 1: The Listmaker in Distress

Warning: This story is not for all audiences. Specifically, you should only try to read this if you are an organization geek. Do you fondle office supplies and make endless to-do lists and color-code your files? OK, then you might be interested. Otherwise your eyes may glaze over and you may fall asleep, drool on your keyboard, drown your computer in saliva, and thereby invalidate your computer warranty which usually doesn’t cover water damage. I take no responsibility for these or other ill effects.

Part 1:  The Listmaker in Distress

In Which We Meet Our Heroine, Understand Her Trials, and Watch Her Muddle Through the Muck of Ill-Fated Non-Solutions

(Well… I liked writing the subhead, but I don’t think I can affect the Canterbury Tales momentum for much longer.  I hope you, dear reader, will accept my apologies for the abrupt shift in tone.)

In my constant quest to organize myself, and especially now in my busy busy pre-book-launch phase (8 weeks to go! omg!), I have been desperate for a way to keep track of all the things I need to do. So I went web surfing and guess what, many brilliant listmakers with actual technical skills have come up with ways to help ME!  How sweet of them.  I thought I would share my dilemma (this part) and some of the cool tools I found (tomorrow).

I am basically a listmaker at heart. I tend to make my to-do lists in various journals and on scraps of paper.  I then lose track of them, so I am often writing a new version of what is more or less the same list because I can’t find the earlier list(s).  This is not so bad, since I actually love making lists, but it is kind of a waste of time.  It would be better if I used my love of listmaking to make new lists, I think, like the list of impossible dreams made possible, or a list of the ways cat love is superior to human love, or a list of vegan ingredients to try putting into cookies.  Maybe I need a list of cool lists to make…   ok, so you see the problem.

I also like to group my to-do items into categories, like: Book tour tasks. Phone calls to make. House stuff.  Things to buy.
Even when I have it together enough to have such a list and start doing the items on it, often I get super stressed because the list of things that I need to do is way more than I can realistically do in a day or even week. I usually don’t realize this ahead of time, so I scale the peaks of valiant productivity and then crash in valleys of despair at how much is left to do.  

So what I need is a realistic sense not only of the tasks to be done and deadlines, but also of priorities and how much time each one is going to take. In my heart of hearts, I believe that things like writing an email or doing laundry take … zero minutes.  You just do em in between other things, right?  It is amazing to me that actually, when I track it, writing a work-related email — original content, not just a reply to something quick — takes an average of 15 minutes.  It just does. Likewise, most things that I need to do take a lot longer than I want to admit.

I’ve tried various paper systems. Lost the papers or the lists got too complicated to keep on paper; scratched-out items and long doodly lines going every which way made me feel less not more organized.  From time to time I realize it would be good to harness the power of computers

So I made a pretty Excel spreadsheet with colors and categories and columns. The main problem was that it wasn’t really integrated into my daily life, so I would forget to look at it for days on end.  Even if I put it on my computer desktop, or printed it out and posted it somewhere I could see it, I just didn’t find it satisfying or enjoyable; in fact, looking at 65 items at a time made me feel very overwhelmed, even if most of them were off in the future.  Also, it couldn’t be very easily synced to my ipod Touch, which is a feature I’ll want when I’m traveling.

Bottomline I want and need a centralized place to sort out all my ideas into lists, then prioritize and see them daily in a way that will actually help me get the things done. And of course it has to be easy to use — because making the list can’t be more time-consuming than actually doing the things on the list! — and free or very low cost, because even though I am empress of my own universe, my income is definitely that of a, um, writer.
TOMORROW: