Getting Back to Normal

After the terrorist bombing of the Boston Marathon only week ago and lock down only four days ago, we're all keen on getting back to normal here. People are doing their level best to just get back to normal and from normal, we long for a day that's boring and routine.  We'd savor that.

It's finally spring and we need to let it remind us of how you can rebound after a long dark winter.  You can start over.  You can (sort of) forget, you can (maybe) forgive, move along wiser and stronger and put one day after another behind you until plain old Boston is just our fair city again.

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My Good Advice for Mike Arrington

I'm a mom. Can I sit you down, offer you a cookie, a glass of milk and share two words of good advice?

Shut up.

Let me remind you, dear, that a person can win in court and still lose in the court of public opinion.

If someone has made allegations against you along the lines that you are a threatening person, try not to end a blog post with something that might sound threatening, like this:

I’ve also asked my attorneys to contact appropriate law enforcement agencies about these false allegations. Given the gravity of the claims, I think it’s important that the police be involved in this now.

You've done many people much good and many favors, but you have also gotten a few people a little pissed off at you.

You're a gifted writer, but it's time to keep all your words to yourself.  Okay, dear?

Top Ten Mistakes of Entrepreneurs by Guy Kawasaki

I think you might like this.  I thought it was awesome.  Guy actually gives you 11 mistakes since he likes to underpromise and over deliver.

Check it out!

Endless Disruptions / Welcome to Saturday

Credit: aliveontheshelves.com

Oy vey!  There are so many forces pulling me in so many directions today.

Okay, here's my mantra.

Write Write Write Write Write Write Write Write
Write Write Write Write Write Write Write Write
Write Write Write Write Write Write Write Write
Write Write Write Write Write Write Write Write
Write Write Write Write Write Write Write Write
Write Write Write Write Write Write Write Write
Write Write Write Write Write Write Write Write
Write Write Write Write Write Write Write Write
Write Write Write Write Write Write Write Write
Write Write Write Write Write Write Write Write

RIGHT!

Lean In Fun

Sheryl Sandberg in Boston / Lean In

Terrific day to hear Sheryl Sandberg speak about her book #LeanIn at the Harvard Club event sponsored by Hubspot, MITX, and TechStars among others.  Honestly, as great as it was to see her, it was even better to meet a roomful of amazing women CEO's and entrepreneurs and learn about what they are all up to. Let me dig up some pictures here.

I am really intrigued by how practical her advice is -- it's almost a business etiquette of inclusion and welcoming -- instead of keeping women outside of the circle.  I am encouraged and hopeful about it.

Thanks to my trusty Kindle I downloaded and read the book asap the day it was published. Now to hear her speak and have her make it real is very exciting. Thanks so much C. A. Webb from New England Venture Capital Association for inviting me to ask her a question.

C.A. Webb and Katie Rae

I asked her about startups can change the rules and help women lead. I mentioned as I write my book Founders Less Than Three, even I find it hard to create fictional women founders who are not the male, hoodie-wearing, unwashed, code monkey stereotypes. Her response was great and encouraged all of us to show the world what these women entrepreneurs look like by BEING one.

Here's the video and a paraphrase of her reply to my question about the images of women entrepreneurs. "A local SF magazine did a piece on female entrepreneurs and they took drawings of male entrepreneurs' bodies -- Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page -- and then just put women's heads on them.  ... For my book, I worked with a researcher and we looked for female characters in popular media ...  who were married, working women, who were happy -- they're are none!  There's no image of  married working women who are happy. There are plenty of images of men who are working and happy.  ... We can be women AND entrepreneurs.  We can help make that happen.  Women need to be at the table and one of those tables is the funding table."  And if that wasn't good enough, she reached out to me personally.  It's not every day you have Sheryl Sandberg say directly to you, "come out and visit me in Silicon Valley and I'll introduce you to more women entrepreneurs," so I do hope to take her up on it.

How to Keep On Keeping On

Found it!  Cleared my desk and found the three most important pages from APE, Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch's book on self-publishing.  I printed them out last summer and they surfaced again just when I needed them most.  When it comes to writing books, they are so right on here:

How to Continue:
-- Control your doubts,
-- Remember the value you're adding to peoples' lives.
-- Ask for help.
-- Don't hide under a bushel.
-- Write every day.
-- Embrace the pain.
-- Don't let successful writers awe you. 

How to Finish:
-- Edit on paper.

Paper!  Wow!  I remember that stuff and it works so well!

And didn't Guy also recommend drinking tea and eating gobs of toast with tangerine marmalade on tough mornings when it's hard to get started?  Let me take a look at the book again, I'm sure it's in there somewhere.

Painted Ladies and Golden Retrievers

Here's my mug that features the Painted Ladies houses in San Francisco's Alamo Square, my tea ticket, my Kindle hiding behind the cup.  I'm ready to start the day but this will be a heck of a day for my manuscript -- have to pull it apart big time to reassemble it just the way it should be.  Thank God I have the greatest editor in the whole wide world.  I need your help big time today Erik!

I'm thinking of my friends in San Francisco who host us when we visit the area.  They have vacation rentals that are a great deal -- houses in North Beach near Coit Tower and their house at Alamo Square.

Here's their site for more info.  They filmed the TV show Full House near here, so their place is often rented for film shoots these days, making it hard to book as an overnight stay location, but their other houses are great too and you can do long stays there since they have full kitchens, multiple bedrooms.

The golden retriever puppies were born in December, three fluffy little balls of crazy energy.  I had no idea they get so big so fast.

I'm keeping a trip to San Francisco in the front of my mind as an incentive to get this book done asap.  I hope we can all get out there for a visit after it's done.  We try to see our friends there at least once a year.

Here's a picture of the parents with their baby on the front steps! If you get a chance, go to my FB page, check out the pix and link to Hakan and Ebba, the parent dogs' FB page.  They are the greatest.

Warm Up

In the morning before I jump back into writing and editing my novel, I do a warm-up exercise of sorts, a writing warm-up, but also have a few other warm-up activities.

First, we have two thermostats -- one for the first floor and one for the second floor -- so at night we leave the downstairs at around 55 degrees,  even in winter and keep the upstairs fairly cool too.  We are NEW ENGLANDERS for God's sake and have quite the selection of blankets, duvets, you name it.

My book: Founders Less Than 3

I write on the first floor, so it's cold when I start and the first warm-up is putting on the tea kettle and cranking up the heat.  I almost always pull on a wool hat to start my early morning writing too.  Don't you? I favor the Peruvian with ear flaps lately. "What?  You want to talk to me?  Sorry, can't hear you!"

A little bending and stretching is good too, a small physical warm-up, but I find if I put my exercise before my writing, it's so easy NOT to get the writing done.  If you're someone who puts their exercise before everything in their day, you know what I mean.  I would rather exercise first, but as I'm finally getting near the end of this book, I can't risk it.  A B C D E F G ... Z come first.

That said, I start by writing something unrelated to anything.  Not part of the book, not part of a story, not part of anything, I open a file and just start scribbling.  Sometimes I pull out a fountain pen and start scribbling on paper. Either method works, just to get the words flowing.

The house is warming up.  The tea is warming me up.  The hat always warms me up.  And now here come the words. Sound the bugles! 

Bless Me Father For I Have Sinned

Yes, confession time, I need another month to finish my Kickstarter book, Founders Less Than Three and I'm officially slipping my March 31 deadline today. I hate slipping deadlines, but I have two very good reasons.

1. Sheryl Sandberg

2. Guy Kawasaki

So it goes like this.  My book Founders Less Than Three is about a brave, bold, female entrepreneur just the kind of person Sheryl Sandberg is writing about in her book  Lean In  which was released March 11, 2013. I have the chance to meet her this week and more importantly, meet all the people (women and men) inspired by her book and get a sense of what they are thinking. I need to experience all that and incorporate it in my book. I need to "lean in" to her literary launch happening this month, watch up close and publish my book AFTER experiencing it. When I set my deadline last year, I didn't realize her book was coming out so close to the date.

I am seeing her twice this week in Boston and I need to connect with the crowds of people at her events even more than with her. I see her Thursday in Brookline and Friday in Boston.

And as for Guy Kawasaki, he's a pal and I love the new book he just co-authored with Shawn Welch,   Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur -- in fact, he's nice enough to call me the "mother" of the book in the acknowledgements.  I haven't actually started using all his good advice on how to get out there and social media market the heck out of it.  If I don't follow his lead and get cranking on marketing my book using the ways he and Shawn have made so easy to understand and follow, I'm an idiot.  I've just been writing it (not promoting it) and that's not enough anymore when it comes to this new world of ebooks.  So I need this month to work on the launch of the book. (Yes, Guy, I should have been doing it all along! Mea culpa!)

Also, I plan to blog every day in April about the book, just to give you an idea about how these things work.  Keep an eye on this blog. Some of it will be thrilling and happy, some down, depressing and dark, but I know i can get this thing out there and can't wait to complete it. I keep two mantras next to my screen -- Perfect is the enemy of good -- and the one that really is kicking my ass today, Steve Job's famous -- Real Artists Ship -- ironic I know.