Blog - Your Book Bakery

Recommendation for Real Artists Don’t Starve

04/10/2023 by Jennifer Harshman

Real artists don’t starve. How can someone say that? Why would they? This is a website about baking (books), so of course a book that revolves around creating and metaphorically eating enough should be featured here.

Jeff says Real Artists Don't Starve, and this cupcake says a book is a great way to serve others and make sure you eat, too.

If you serve others well, you deserve to eat, too.

The images of the book are clickable links that go to Amazon, and if you make a purchase, Amazon might share a crumb of its profit with me, at no charge to you.

Real artists behave differently compared to starving artists.

Jeff Goins wrote a book with that title: Real Artists Don’t Starve, and it shows us the differences between starving artists and successful artists. Now, when I say “artists,” it is not just referring to people who produce watercolors or sculptures. It means anyone who creates anything.

You are an artist.

Don’t starve.

Real Artists Don’t Starve

In this book, Jeff Goins explores the idea of the starving artist myth and how it is not necessarily true. The book is based on the idea that creativity and success are not mutually exclusive, and that with the right mindset, anyone can achieve success. It provides practical advice on how to make money from your art, how to build a successful creative career, and how to develop the right mindset to achieve success. It also provides inspiring stories from successful creatives who have found success in their art.

Here are a couple of the lessons from the book.

One of them is:

**The Starving Artist waits to be noticed.**

**The Thriving Artist cultivates patrons.**

This lesson revolves around what Jeff calls the “Rule of the Patron” . . . which says that before you can build a large following, you have to learn to please a single reader, follower, or patron.

Another lesson from the book is this one:

**The Starving Artist works alone.**

**The Thriving Artist Collaborates with others.**

In that portion of the book, Jeff shares the story of the Inklings—the famous group of writers that included literary legends C.S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien—and how some magnificent works that we enjoy today almost didn’t come to be!

These are just couple of great things Jeff shares in his book to help you succeed in your creative pursuits.

Click the image to order your copy on Amazon.

If you’re ready to create, join us! Here are some ways to do that:

Low-Priced Membership: Work/Writing Sprints in the Kitchen, the $9/mo membership that helps you double your productivity

Book: Your Book Bakery: Making it easy to write a book

Group-Coaching Program: Your Book Bakery: 12 Weeks to a Manuscript

Great way to write a book in 12 weeks

04/03/2023 by Jennifer Harshman

What does it take to write a book in 12 weeks?

This author who is typing will write a book in 12 weeks because she is determined.

To accomplish any given goal, you must have certain tools or equipment, and you must do certain things. This is certainly true for anyone who wants to participate in Your Book Bakery: 12 Weeks to a Nonfiction Manuscript.

Before you commit to something, you should know what doing it looks like. Here is a sober look at writing a book with this recipe. This is going to take 40 to 100 hours of your time as you write a book in 12 weeks or less.

Schedule needed to write a book in 12 weeks

Week 1: You will spend several hours asking and answering a lot of questions to figure out which book to write. You’ll begin talking to select people about your book and the possibility of receiving their endorsement of it.

Week 2: You will spend two to ten hours doing basic research for your book, keeping track of your sources.

Week 3: You’ll start dumping words onto the page as fast as you can, without thinking. You will get 10,000 words into your manuscript. This means banging on the keyboard for at least one hour every day or 2,000 words a day for five days.

Week 4: This week, you’ll get to 20,000 words. This is long enough for many books.

Week 5: You will get to a maximum of 30,000 words, then look to see what’s missing and make note of it.

Week 6: You’ll revise your draft during this week. Spend five to ten hours adding anything missing, examples, stories, and details.

Week 7: You’ll continue to revise. Spend up to five hours checking sources, clarity, and crutch words. After that, spend up to five hours varying your sentence length and structure, then send your manuscript to endorsers and a line editor. If you use beta readers, you will probably not be able to write a book in 12 weeks. It’s up to you. If you have the time to spare, then let it take a little longer. Now is the time to send the manuscript to beta readers if you use them.

Week 8: You’ll do nothing and like it (hat tip to Caddy Shack).

Week 9: This week, you will wait to hear back from your endorsers and editor (and beta readers if you have them).

Week 10: You’ll begin receiving endorsements, feedback, and rejections—all with gratitude.

Week 11: You’ll continue to receive responses. It’s been a month, so you should have your edited manuscript back. Now is the time that you’ll go ove

r the edits and accept/reject changes.

Week 12: You’ll publish your book and celebrate.

Ready to write a book in 12 weeks or less?

If this sounds like something you are ready to commit to, read on.

Before we allow anyone to sign up for Your Book Bakery: 12 Weeks to a Nonfiction Manuscript, we require them to make a commitment. We say that by signing up for this program, you are giving your word that you have or have access to (or by the start date, will have/have access to) the following:

A computer that works
Internet access
Slack (We’ll invite you via email, and it’s free.)
Google Drive
Thumb/Jump drives or other external storage device
Three locations for storing your manuscript (examples include email, Google Drive, Dropbox, external hard drive, computer hard drive, thumb drives, burnable discs)
At least one hour every day to write your book

You are also giving your word that you will do the following:

Carve out time in your daily schedule to write. We’ve helped hundreds of authors, and we can tell you that if it is not on the calendar, it will not get done.
Tell the people in your life that for the next 12 weeks, they must ask someone else to do the things they’ve been asking you to do. We promise, they will survive.
Dedicate at least one hour per day for your book in all phases except for Week 8 and 9. Write for at least one hour or 2,000 words every day during the writing phase. We host writing/work sprints for hours every day to help you with this.
Post weekly your WIP (work in progress, your manuscript as it stands) in the Google Drive folder that Your Book Bakery assigns to you. Accountability is key.

Setting themselves up to fail

You would probably be surprised how many people who have participated in this program in the past did the following:

A couple of participants did not have a computer. They expected to write a book on their phone or iPad. I’m not kidding.
Some neglected to schedule time to write. How can anyone expect to accomplish something they do not make time for? We don’t know, either.
Some allowed their friends, family members, churches, and other organizations to monopolize their time and run roughshod over the boundaries they had set. How can someone expect to have the time needed to accomplish a goal if they don’t defend their boundaries regarding their time? They can’t.
Some claimed to have written thousands of words each week, only for Jennifer to discover that they hadn’t written any words at all. Why lie? They wanted to please The Book Baker (Jennifer) and their peers, and they didn’t want to admit that they had not carved out the time, set boundaries with people in their life, or put in the effort needed to write a book in 12 weeks.

Guaranteed success in writing your book

If you follow the recipe, you are guaranteed to succeed in writing your book. In fact, if you follow the recipe and you do not have a completed first draft by the end of the program, I will give you your money back.

Every person who follows this recipe . . . Every person who schedules time, sets boundaries, dumps the words on the page, and revises their manuscript succeeds. They write a book in 12 weeks.

Will you be one of them?

This is for the self-serve option. It’s a traditional course you do on your own, and the price is much lower.

Access the Self-Serve version.

Images created by AI cannot be copyright protected

03/27/2023 by Jennifer Harshman

Images created by AI cannot be copyright protected, author Kristina Kashtanova recently found out the hard way.

Images generated by AI cannot be copyright protected; image is of the US Copyright Office seal, which is in the public domain.

The US Copyright Office had ruled in favor of Kristina Kashtanova, a Russian–born artist living in the US, in a copyright infringement case she brought against a company that used her artwork without her permission. They used her artwork in a series of advertisements without getting her permission or giving her compensation. The Copyright Office found that they’d infringed upon her copyright and ordered them to pay her damages. The ruling showed that the US Copyright Office takes copyright infringement seriously and will protect the rights of artists.

The US Copyright Office rescinded their decsion once they found out that the images in the book had been AI generated. They decided that images created by AI cannot be copyright protected. There is debate over whether this is good or bad.

This painting of a woman in a kitchen is an example: Images created by AI cannot be copyright protected,

Images created by AI cannot be copyright protected, but

Images created by AI cannot be copyright protected, but the text the author wrote is still under copyright protection. To be clear: the decision only applies to the images the author created using the assistance of AI technology, not to the words she wrote. The text belongs to the author and is covered under copyright law as usual.

The US Copyright Office makes this clear in their letter to the author’s lawyer: “We conclude that Ms. Kashtanova is the author of the Work’s text as well as the selection, coordination, and arrangement of the Work’s written and visual elements. That authorship is protected by copyright. However, as discussed below, the images in the Work that were generated by the Midjourney technology are not the product of human authorship. Because the current
registration for the Work does not disclaim its Midjourney-generated content, we intend to cancel the original certificate issued to Ms. Kashtanova and issue a new one covering only the expressive material that she created.”

AI is changing the world

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has been making great strides in the world of art, creating some works that are indistinguishable from those created by humans—and some that are grotesque, unusable frights.

The US Copyright Office stated that the copyright law does not recognize works created by machines or computer programs as original works of authorship, which is what copyright law is intended to protect. This means that any artwork or content created by AI is not copyright protected and can be used by anyone without penalty.

The US Copyright Office’s decision to refuse to protect AI–generated artwork and content under copyright law is seen by many as a major blow to the AI art industry. AI art is becoming increasingly popular, and many artists are relying on the sale of their AI–generated works to make a living. Without the protection of copyright law, AI artists are left vulnerable to having their works copied and used without their permission or compensation. Many find this to be theft.

As found in this Legal Sidebar by the Congressional Research Service talking about AI and copyright law, “A recent lawsuit has challenged the human-authorship requirement in the context of works purportedly ‘authored’ by AI. In June 2022, Stephen Thaler sued the Copyright Office for denying an application to register a visual artwork that he claims was authored by an AI program called the Creativity Machine. Dr. Thaler asserts the picture was created ‘autonomously by machine,’ and he argues that human authorship is not required by the Copyright Act. The lawsuit is pending.”

Copyright law needs to catch up

All of this is a reminder that the law is still catching up with advancements in technology. As AI tech continues to improve, it is likely that copyright law will have to improve. For now, images created by AI cannot be copyright protected. But times and technology change.

12 Tips for busting through writer’s block now

03/20/2023 by Jennifer Harshman

Chalkboard says busting through writer's block 101: what works for others might not work for you. Try different things.

Busting through writer’s block is one key for being productive with writing. Some people say they never experience this challenge. Others say they used to but managed to overcome it. Others cope with it often. First, what is writer’s block?

Writer’s block is the point at which a writer gets stuck regarding their writing. This gritty, dry cookie is commonly believed to be a complete lack of words. The writer sits down to write, but the words seem stuck behind a wall in their brain, unable to make the trip through the author’s fingers and onto the page.

Some people might experience writer’s block in this manner. I’ve found that it’s much more common for writer’s block to present in a different way.

The writer has far too many ideas for projects to work on and no direction or ability to prioritize or choose which one to work on first. Other writers have narrowed their list down to one project to work on, and they experience writer’s block as hundreds of ideas or words all flowing out of the brain in a jumbled, incoherent mess. The words and phrases zip through their mind so quickly that it’s impossible to grab onto one word or phrase and then complete the sentence. They also believe that they have to write their draft in complete sentences. What? A person doesn’t have to write complete sentences? Not in the dumping draft stage.

Is writer’s block just procrastination?

I wouldn’t say it’s “just” procrastination, but in any instance where someone needs to bust through writer’s block, the struggle can manifest as avoidance and procrastination. Have you ever wondered what causes the phenomenon we call writer’s block? There is no one-size-fits-all answer. Here are a few common causes:

- lack of confidence in their writing
- lack of confidence in the writing project
- fear of failure
- fear of success
- not seeing themselves as writers
- a general lack of confidence in themselves
- believing that writing will have some sort of negative impact on someone close to the writer
- perfectionism

This image of a poster shows that developing a writing habit helps with busting through writer's block now. — Developing a habit helps with busting through writer’s block.

Ideas for busting through writer’s block

If you ever face writer’s block, finding the root cause of its occurrence in you may take a little bit of personal digging, prayer, and self-reflection. In the meantime, there are some simple tips you can use for busting through the block, and getting some work onto the page. Befitting the baking theme, there are a dozen.

Use the Pomodoro Technique. In case you haven’t heard of this, I’ll explain it here. It involves setting a timer for a specific amount of time, usually 25 minutes. Try this adorable cupcake-shaped timer for your writing sessions. Just click it, and it will take you to the page on Amazon where you can purchase it. During the work time, you focus your attention on the writing at hand and ignore everything else. When the timer goes off, you take a 5-minute break to attend to something else. After those 5 minutes, you set another 25-minute timer and go back to writing. After a few rounds, you take a 15-minute break. I always recommend starting with two minutes on the work timer until you develop the habit. Over time, you can adjust the length of the work and break time. I prefer a 55/5 split, but I’ve been using intense writing times alternating with short breaks since the 1990s.
Enlist the help of an accountability partner. This is someone to whom you must give an account of the progress you’ve made on your writing project.
Start a routine that includes writing time. Don’t allow yourself to do anything else with that time. At first, you might be sitting there doing nothing for the entire length of your scheduled writing session. That’s okay. Producing words on demand is a habit that must be built. Eventually, your brain will get the message, and the words will start pouring out of you the moment you sit down.
Create a reward system for yourself. One example of this might be to go for a walk in the park with your dog after you’ve written 1,000 words each day. Or, maybe you put a sticker on your planner for every 500 words you write. Create a reward system that motivates you. Despite the fact that this site and all of its products and services involve a baking theme and sweets galore, I really do advise against using food as a motivator or reward—especially foods that contain sugar.
Track your word count daily in an app or spreadsheet. It’s fun and can be incredibly motivating to see that word count climb each day.
Take a break from writing, and do something else that is creative.
Change your writing environment. Trip to a coffee shop that sells scones, anyone?
Read or listen to something that inspires you.
Brainstorm ideas with a friend, or get their feedback. Often, talking gets the writing juices flowing and is great for busting through writer’s block.
Take a walk, and observe your surroundings.
Write about something completely unrelated to your project.
Take a break and do something that relaxes you.

Don’t let anyone tell you that this challenge isn’t real. It is. But a productive writer develops ways of busting through writer’s block. For more tips, contact Jennifer Harshman, The Book Baker.®

Check out Your Book Bakery: 12 Weeks to a Manuscript.

6 Ways a book is like a cake

03/13/2023 by Jennifer Harshman

A book is like a cake. If you can follow a recipe to bake a cake, you can write a nonfiction book. I can hear you questioning that statement.

A book is like a cake, and this cake is white with pink drizzles and rainbow sprinkles.

Baking a cake is easy. It’s a skill most people can learn. Those of us who are comfortable around the kitchen will gather flour, eggs, sugar, oil, baking powder, and other ingredients and then create a masterpiece. Even if you’re not a natural in the kitchen—or if you like convenience and speed—there are tools you can buy to make the task simpler.

You could buy a cake mix. Add eggs, oil, and water—and perhaps a handful of chocolate chips or coconut shreds to create your own masterpiece.

A book is like a cake. Writing a book is also a skill most people can learn.

How a book is like a cake

Just as with baking a cake, writing a book requires assembling the right ingredients in the correct order. You might be asking how a book is like a cake—which “ingredients” go into baking a book.

The desire to write a book, or the will to do it, is one of the first ingredients. If you don’t have the drive to show up and write it (or the budget to pay someone to write it for you), then it simply won’t happen.
They have a specific audience and/or purpose. Every cake you bake has an intended recipient or occasion: “I want to bake a cake for Johnny’s birthday.” Your book starts with a similar idea. “I want to write a book to help small business owners market their company.” Of course, you might be like Jack and want to bake just because you have a craving for cake. That’s still a purpose.
A book is like a cake in that they both require some research. Before you bake that birthday cake, you’re going to do a little bit of research about your intended audience. How many people will be at the party? Are there any food allergies? What is Johnny’s favorite flavor? Writing a book is the same. What marketing knowledge do small business owners seem to lack? Where are they currently getting their marketing information?

These young partygoers have no idea that a book is like a cake. They just want to know what's in the gift bag.

A plan is needed for both. When you bake a cake, you’re following a recipe, however loosely. Completing a book involves creating a plan and then following that plan.
An appropriate place to work is a must. You wouldn’t try to bake your cake in the garage. To be successful in writing, you need an appropriate workspace. This doesn’t have to be a physical location, although that helps. It could be a laptop, which you can move to different locations.
Another way a book is like a cake is that both take time. When you’re baking a cake, you mix the ingredients into a bowl, pour them into a pan, and put the pan in a hot oven. While in the oven, the cake batter transforms and solidifies. When you take it out, you set it on the counter to cool. That’s when the cake settles and becomes the final version of itself. Your book is no different. You will choose your ingredients in the kitchen of your mind. Then you will sit down to write, which is mixing your batter and baking your book. After that, you’ll send your book to your editor. That’s the cooling and shaping stage. Then it goes to the designer, who frosts the cake. A book is like a cake in the final step, too: displaying it, also known as publishing and marketing your book.

Just like baking a good cake, writing a good book requires a great recipe. You find great recipes in cookbooks, and you learn from master chefs. You might even attend a baking class or seminar. Jennifer Harshman is The Book Baker®. She will help you discover the perfect recipe to create your nonfiction masterpiece. Click this image (links to Amazon) to check out her book Your Book Bakery: Making it easy to write a book.

Join Your Book Bakery: 12 Weeks to a Manuscript, the tastiest and most enjoyable workshop, to learn how to bake your next book. Remember: a book is like a cake. If you can follow a recipe, you can write your nonfiction book.