I'm eating. Happy May, everybody! It's watch me work. It's all about working and eating. I'm SLP. We've been doing a show longer than I can remember. I love doing this. I love meeting you all on Mondays at 5 p.m. This is what we do if you don't know. We work for 20 minutes together and then I invite you to ask me questions about your work and your creative process. The way it works is that if you ask me a question about my work and my creative process, I'll be like a wonderful human being and make it all about you and turn the question around so that we talk about your work and your creative process. While we don't have time to have you read from your work or show your work or whatever, we do have time to talk about process. If you have a question or anticipate having a question about process, Lolly is going to tell you how to get into high school. Yes, if you have a question, you can use the raise of your hand function, which is in the reactions tab, likely at the bottom of your screen. That's if you're here in Zoom with us. If you have any trouble finding the reactions tab, just let me know and I can help you out in the chat. If you're watching live with us on HowlRound, you can send your questions via the Public Theater's Instagram or Twitter accounts or via the Watch Me Work Twitter account, which is at Watch Me Work SLP with the hashtag HowlRound. That's hashtag H-O-W-L-R-O-U-N-D. All right. Okay, we're going to start. All right. Ready, Lolly? And go. All right. All right. That is time. That is time. It is time to take some questions after I untangle my cord there. Uh-huh. Oh, looks like we have a question already from Kimmy D. Hey, Kimmy, how you doing? Hi, Susan Laurie. It's nice to see you. Hi, Lolly. Hi, everybody. I have a structural question, please. I have two characters that are seeing the same therapist. And while they're at different times for the sake of this scene, they're seeing the therapist at the same time. So their dialogue is kind of split and staggered. And I was wondering how does that look on the page? Is there a mechanism on final draft that helps me split it or how do I do that? So they're basically saying you have two characters who are in the same scene. Yes. I don't care who they're in the same scene with. I mean, therapy, they're talking. They're both talking. I'm sorry. They're each in a session alone with the therapist, but on stage it's all three of them at the same time. Does that make any sense? I'm not making any sense. They're not seeing the therapist at the same time. No. Okay. The scene is the simultaneous scene. They're seeing the therapist at different times. Yes. Right. I'm so glad you're magic and get inside my head and ask the question.  I just imagined that people are in the toilet, actually.   It doesn't look like where, you know what I mean? So that's the kind of thing. So is there a mechanism on final draft?  I mean, if you want them to, you know, how to format your page, that I am sorry. Oh, that's okay. Was it worth it? You have to imagine what you want it to look like on the page. You know, columns basically, but you have to look at your word does it? Final draft does it? They all do it, but I that's that's that, you know, there's writing, there's a creative act, and then there's typing. While I'm a really good typist, really, I kind of would allow, you know, you to figure that one out on your own. That's why my play is in a book written by hands. Come on. It's not that. It's not that hard, Kimmy.  Okay. Thank you. I didn't even know that much. Oh, I'm guessing, but I think that's how you do it. Thank you. You're welcome, dear. All questions are welcome. They're all good. Some of them make us laugh. Thank you, Kimmy. Oh, it looks like Amy is at a hand. Yeah. Okay. Oh, you need to unmute yourself. I just gave you permission. There you go. Hi. So I'm a teacher and I'm teaching a class with students who they're sixth graders. They're devising plays. They're devising their own plays. And we're in a spot right now where they have so each, each cohort has choose has chosen a different play structure, I guess, or group of characters. With one group, they've devised, so they're sixth graders. So they're between anyways, between like 10 and 11 and they're all girls. And they've decided to use the motif of little like princesses, but they want these princesses to be very on princess quote unquote like. So we're in this spot and I'm sorry to bring this, but I'm totally lost with how to guide them. They have they have created dialogue that is just fraught with a lot of just there's there's no there it's just fraught with constant conflict. And I don't want to I don't want to get inside of it and try to tell them don't do conflict. But how, how would one influence resolution without it being without it being genuinely coming from these particular girls are not even resolution but the conflict is it's literally 20 minutes of constant conflict, which is interesting but it's also I just right, right, right. That's really great. I mean, first of all, thank you for teaching, you know, writing to sixth graders. I have a sixth grader. I can send them to you. Oh, well, and this is an all girls school. Okay. And so like, they're really particular to, I don't know, it's, it's just really interesting. I mean, it'll be the whole class and it's just all conflict and pushing and and obviously I let it go to violence because I couldn't and I wouldn't want it. But there's just so much inside of it. And I'm lost with how to help them shape it. So yeah, so how long is the play going to be? Well, we have a 40 minute class. And so I'm looking at a half hour, you know, scenes of just yeah, great. And is it one long scene?  Well, I really wanted it to come from their writing. Do you know what I mean? So like, I can have a vision of it. I could but the way that the writing has has they're on a Google doc. So they share the Google doc. And they just they've been typing in working together in terms of creating scenes. So right now, the first scene they have is them arriving at this preparatory school, if you will, they're all Disney princesses showing up, they each have their own voice. And one girl, the girl who's Mulan, she also plays piano, and she doesn't talk in class at all. And she's very shut down physically. So her whole dialogue is on the piano, her whole it's just all piano. Worked for her. But I guess I guess I don't know what the plot is. Ask them. I mean, just because they haven't figured it out yet doesn't mean that by asking them questions, it won't come from them, right? So why said, well, how long is it you can set a limit? You're allowed and that's and then they're going to fill it. You know what I mean? Like, you're going to give them a container, meaning it's a 15 minute play or whatever you're going to say, which means it's going to be about 12 pages, you know, 15 pages, I don't know what Google doc, I don't know how it types out or anything. And then you can ask them each, what does your character want? And how is she going to get it by the end of those 15 pages? You know, and what is so they can they can have conflict. That's that's fine. That's great. But what does she want more than like, I just want to like snap at the other characters say like, you're dressed as this pretty as mine or whatever they're going to say, you know, but what does she want more than anything? You know, what what does she want when she walks into the room or like you said, arrives at the preparatory school? What would she like to have happen by the end of the play for herself? What would she like to have happen for herself? And how is she going to get it? You know, so so the desire that the urge, the dramatic trajectory of the character is more interesting than just some what you call conflict. It just sounds like it's not really going anywhere. That's what it sounds like. But is that helpful? It's very helpful. And they can list the things like I want, I want people to listen to me. I want to feel so comfortable that I can, I can speak aloud and not just speak to my piano. I want to make a friend. I want to make sure that no one knows how crazy my parents are. Or I want to, you know, I want to invite everybody to the party by the end. By the end of the first day, I want to have everybody's whatever that whatever it is that they want, they can write those things down in a separate document. And then they can check in with themselves or you about like, am I am I getting what I want?  Like, what did you want? Amy, you wanted some someone to answer a question about, you know, what you're teaching in class. And, you know, that's that's the basic, you know, it would help. And if we can create a separate document about what my character wants, then they can understand that they can sort of have a reference point to look at, like a guidepost, if you will, that could be helpful. Thank you. Yeah, but thanks again for for teaching, you know, student, you know, sixth graders, you're, you're heroic. No, not really. Come on. Come on. It's great. It's really great. We love teachers, love teachers. So thank you for doing doing the great work. Thank you. Thank this helps so much. Sure. And please come back and we ask about your own writing because, you know, thank you so much. It looks like we have will you should be able to unmute now. I will. Hi Susan, Laurie, I want to ask you about how you think about depth. One of the things I'm working on a piece right now looking at fat ham and they talk a lot about softness.  I'm curious, how do you think about adding that depth? I know you just asked about think about what does that character want? How do you try to find that balance while not just trying to think about what you might want and portray that onto a character? Right. Depth like the the deepness of a character. Sorry. You're okay. Right. Okay. I just want to make sure I understood. I don't really think about what I want for a character. That's me. I think about what the character wants. So, you know, so that's how I deal with a depth and getting into the character. Because once I start thinking about what I want, I mean, shoot, I want to sit on the couch and eat some chocolate ice cream. You know what I'm saying? The character wants to, you know, build a bridge to Narnia or whatever, you know what I mean? But I want to sit on the couch and eat. So, I'm very clear, like the character wants that. And if it's share, share, you can say the characters come from me. Of course, of course, of course. But in the moment, I'm, I am the character. I'm not thinking like, like, top dog or dog. Like, what is, what does Susan Laurie want for Lincoln? Who cares about Susan Laurie? I mean, I've never met him, but I hear he's a really good writer. Shakespeare. I don't know how he wrote, but I can guess that that writer put all of themselves into the character consistently. You know, and I think the, I think the wonky writing comes when we're, we don't give in to the character. We don't get, you know, really walk around in their shoes, live in their skin. We're all, we're sitting outside commenting on that kind of thing. And then, you know, that's, that's, that's, that's not, in my opinion, that's not a strong, a strong way of writing as one might do. So if you think of what does the character want, that's all you're thinking about. That's it. What you want for the character. Who cares? Okay. The character wants to know whatever the three said they want to go to Moscow.  Hamlet wants to figure out who the Frick killed his daddy or whatever, you know, I don't know. These things. King Lear wants to have a nice retirement, whatever. You see what I'm saying? I don't know what Shakespeare wants for King Lear. I don't really care. Does that help? Yes it does.  Both of them. I mean, I'm sorry, assuming that you have two feet, we're just sorry if I, that was offensive to anybody. Deposit your being in their being and take it from there. Perfect. Thank you. Good question, man. Thank you. Timothy. Hey, Timothy. How are you? I'm well. Good to see you, man. You too. You too. I have a small announcement and then, which leads to my question. When I was having trouble getting off first base and we were meeting, you know, in here in like August or September and you helped me out. Well, I finished a draft of that play. So yeah, so I was happy for about five minutes and then I was like, thank you everybody. And then I was kind of seeing like where it's funny because it's sort of like what Will just asked, where, where like the character didn't, I couldn't get out of the character. I needed to get out of the character in order to like establish that strong want. Does that make any sense? Yeah. So I was sort of, you know, I guess what I'm saying is, I guess what I'm asking is like what you were just saying before about like, you know, find the characters want. I sometimes just like write a lot of stuff about the character and expect it to just emerge. And I was wondering if there was anything that could goose that process along. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. I mean, we could activate the, the, the, the question we could activate the writer, Timothy. I mean, if you're writing stuff and did you say hoping that it would emerge or thinking that it would emerge? Usually something emerges if I kind of just start writing down everything I know about the character and, you know, what does she, what does she think, you know, what happened to her when she was 10 that, that's like, she's here now, that kind of thing. Right. So could you be a little more, so I think you need to lean into it a little more. It sounds like you need to be more pointed, like, you know, what happened to her when she was 10? And she's, and you have an answer for that, right? I mean, you write it down. Yeah, I could, yeah. Great. Okay. What really happened? You see what I mean?   You're not, you're not, you're not digging with your hands. You're not digging with a spoon. You're digging with a nice trowel. You get a shovel in there.  You know what I mean? Yeah.  Well, I want to go to Moscow. No, really, really, what, what do you really want? Why do you want to go to Moscow? What's wrong with where you're living now? I can't, I forget the town where they live in. You know what I mean? You know, you can be a little more assertive with your questions, with your desire to get to know them.  I was okay. Yeah. No, really, I was, you know, I was, how was math class?  Yes or no? You can lean in a little bit more. And I think that your, then your characters will be perhaps more, tell you more of what they need to, and that will actually bring the two of you closer together, you see, instead of, oh, okay, just tell me about your day, you know. It's funny that I think it was Kimmy, she mentioned therapy, you know, a lot of, there's styles of therapy that just let the, the person talk, you know, and oh, that, oh, that's interesting. Oh, that's interesting. And then there's styles or the therapists really get in there and start to, you know, why'd you do that? What's going on with you like that? You can be a little bit more aggressive in a good way, you know, not bullying, just leaning. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes a lot of sense, actually. Thank you. But congratulations on finishing your first draft. Thanks. Yeah, try being happy, you know, being happy for another five minutes, tack five minutes. You're only happy for five minutes. Oh my goodness. You guys are helping. So yeah, I'll give myself 10 more. There you go. There you go. Okay. Thank you. Good question, Timothy. Thank you. Thanks. Who's next? Uh-oh. Was Lolly here? So you're not, you're muted. I think you have to unmute yourself.  I can't hear you. Lolly, are you still on? I don't see you. Host, yeah, host has to unmute. I think one of these wonderful, this is the moment where we say we love technology. Don't we just love technology? Lolly might have had some technical difficulty because, oh, she made me the host. Okay. I'm going to not roll my eyes. This might take a while because I am in several things right now. Hold on just a sec. Okay. If we could hold on just one sec, I'm going to check some of my settings. Okay. Okay. Lolly's going to come back on in a sec. She has some, she's having technical difficulty. We'll just wait and talk about the weather until she gets back on and can unmute people. In New York, it's kind of cloudy and the spring that we thought, oh, we missed spring. It went by too fast. I think it really came back in the last couple of days and it was raining a lot and it was like, wow, really cool. So it's been very exciting weather-wise. Hello, everyone. I'm so sorry. My computer just randomly shut down and then it started screaming at me like at full volume. Yeah, it made this really loud beeping noise in my headphones. It was so crazy. But I'm here now. Apologies for the brief hiatus. I know that we had Al wanted to ask a question, I think. So I will ask you to unmute and then we've got a couple others in the queue. Hi, thanks a lot. Hi, everybody. My big issue that I'm dealing with right now is having a couple of decades worth of creative U-turns, a lot of disappointments professionally, finished projects that never saw the light of day. And I'd like to be able to somehow cheerlead myself to keep moving on. You can read tons of stories about people who finally published it 70, their first novel or whatever. But I wanted to know if you had any kind of thoughts on, I'm not asking you necessarily for your own personal, anything that happened to you that you were able to just kind of turn things around or just really focus on the work instead of worrying about the intended audience. So I guess I could just use some cheerleading. Oh, sweetheart. Yeah. That's part of what we're here for. And I mean, while we're all cheering you on, because yeah, we're all running the marathon and we're all simultaneously watching from the sidelines, cheering each other, the other runners on all the time. You can be mindful. I mean, I love the way you're talking about your work. So it sounds very, very sort of forward thinking and positive. And, you know, I think just continue to be mindful about that we do this all the time.  So you're hypnotizing yourself constantly. So anytime, and it doesn't sound like you do this often, but anytime you catch yourself saying something, let's just say down about your work. You know what I mean? You can refashion that so that you're constantly thinking of yourself in a positive light. That sounds corny, you know, because it's not corny. So just think of, you're an amazing hypnotist, right? So you've done the work. That's the most important thing. And that's something that a lot of people never do. So pat yourself on the back for that. Pat yourself on the back for anything. Pat yourself on the back for coming here.  Pat yourself on the back. Being in a state of like congratulations. Good job, you know.  So that's the kind of thing. And also continue working. So maybe, you know, maybe sometimes we say, I wrote this, you know, 10 years ago, I made this pen 10 years ago and no one likes it yet. I'm just going to keep trying to get someone to like this pen, you know what I mean? I mean, that's okay. That's good. So that might only take one hand. And with the other hand, you can start to develop your sharpie, you know what I'm saying? And you can do things, you know, so that you can have tons of work. You know, I mean, lots of finished projects that haven't seen the light of day and make, you know, the word yet, one of your best friends that haven't seen the light of day yet. I have started reading Shakti Gawain, who is amazing, but no but, and yet, the negative talk is pretty loud. So it's, I assume that everybody goes through this, but it's just, you know, you get to these points is like, I want to get out of this. I just want to be able to keep going. Yeah. But just saying that out loud is really great. It's helpful. Thank you. Even say I'm finding a way out of this. I always find a way to keep going. Just what, you know, you just, we all have to be really aware of the ways in which we're, we're, I mean, I'm not saying we can control everything as we control the weather or whatever, but I'm saying that we become more and more aware of the things that we do have some say over and just focus on those things as much as we can. Because what happens then, I remember maybe a year ago or something, someone who was writing a screenplay was on Watch Me Work and and they said, yeah, I've written this screenplay, but I don't have a team. I don't have anybody who can help me with it. I just said, just why don't we frame that differently? And then they started talking about the people they did know. And I was like, well, it sounds like you've got a team. So reframing things can help us see what's there in a different way in a different light. And then maybe we might start to recognize some possibilities that have been there all along. We just kind of haven't noticed them. You know, so and keep coming back here because we will cheer you on. Oh, thanks. Yeah, sure. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Awesome. Okay, I think we'll have Veronica next and then we'll go to Nicole and then Lisa pending time. I'll talk fast. So my question. Oh, hi. It gets back to the what we're talking about with characters, but I tend to lean on the side of memoir and nonfiction and autobiographical. And so I was wondering how you really approach doing deep work when the character is part of yourself, similar to how you kind of had to probably do for like plays for the play gear or other works like that. You ask yourself, what's the story? Like if you say you were 100 years old, right, which you might be, you never know what with the filters that are used these days.  So Veronica, what's the story? You can say I'm going to tell you from the time from when I was five to when I was 10. That's the story. I'm going to tell you when I was 20 to when I was 27, when I just moved to New York City. That's the story. Even if it's your own life, you're telling a piece of it.  Great. Cradle the grave. That's the story. You see what I'm saying? What's the story? What are we looking at? What are you asking your audience, your reader to look at? And whether it's plays for the play gear or whatever, top dog, underdog. It's all the same. What's the story? What am I talking about? It helps you frame the subject, helps you edit. Okay. I'm going to talk to you. I'm going to from when I'm 19 to when I'm 22. Great. So I got my dog, you know, Fitzwilliam, when I was 27. Well, Fitzwilliam isn't in the story.  Fitzwilliam, what a name for a dog. Lord have mercy. Okay. You get it? That makes sense. Okay. So just keep asking yourself, what's the story? What story am I telling? So I'm talking fast because I'm looking at the clock. Okay. So is Nicole next? Awesome. Hi, Nicole. You should be able to So I guess I was thinking about the different ways that theater can be consumed. And I was, I realized that like, for example, I read Father Comes Home from Wars, like as a printed version, I wasn't able to like see it on the stage. And so I guess I was just curious about when in the writing process, you think about how it fits on the stage or how exactly like the genre lends itself to a new or different type of writing? So how it looks. So when do we decide, are you saying when do we decide if it's going to be a play or what or how is it going to look on the stage? I'm sorry. I guess like, if you're, if you already know that you're writing a play, um, how do you balance like thinking about plots and characters, which I guess are not unique to theater to thinking about like, okay, well, this needs to like appear on stage at some point. And for these reasons, I need to specifically think about these elements. Does that make sense? These these need, I'm sorry, plot and character, which aren't unique to theater, right? And then at some point you need to think about these, what you cut out? Like, if you were to think about how to take like the creative like aspects that you've created, and to like put them on a stage, right? Is that something that you're constantly thinking about? Or does that, or do you need to like establish plot characters first? All at the same time. Okay. We'll think about it all at the same time.  I'm talking about these things. I'm doing these things. This is where I'm sitting. You're thinking about it all at once. It's all of a piece. That that's kind of the fun way to do it. Because then you're saying, okay, I've got a character. She's baking a raspberry tort. She's in a kitchen. She might have on an apron. She's got some ingredients. You see what I mean? It's all, it all kind of comes together as one thing. Instead of I've got a character, her name was Mary. You can do that. The character, her name is Mary. What is she doing? She's baking. What is she baking? I don't know. Raspberry tort. Great. Where is she? Is she outside at a campfire? No, no, she's in the kitchen. She's in a test kitchen. It could be a TV show. Do you see what I mean? It all kind of comes together. Does that make, does that make sense? It does make sense. Thank you. You're welcome. It's more fun that way too. Kind of whip it up all at once. Thank you so much, Nicole. And lastly, we have Lisa. Lisa, good to see you again. Good to see you too. Good to see everybody. So this is a question that sort of grew out of something that happened in this workshop maybe five or six weeks ago, maybe when I first joined. And it's, I'm in a program, a writing program where we workshop a lot. And I'm really convinced the more I workshop, the worse I'm getting at it. Because it just feels like whatever your reaction to the comments in the workshop are, it's never the right reaction. And on one hand, I'm of course very grateful to people who have read my work or thought about it and are offering comments. And that's great. But on the other hand, I have like, literally lost a job when supposedly I did not take comments well for an outline of a television episode I was writing. When all I did was sit there and write down the person's comments. So I'm convinced we should all like take workshops on how to workshop. We should like have practice rounds or something. Or I'm just doing it completely wrong. So what are your thoughts on that? That's really rough. Well, yeah, it's tricky when we expose ourselves to the kindness or unkindness of strangers. Or it's a little tricky. I think that's unfortunate that you say you lost a job because of the way you took some notes. You know, that's unfortunate, maybe. Rejection is God's protection. Or, you know, would you really want to be in a writer's room or whatever with somebody who like was treating you like that? No, and actually the show got canceled. So. Good. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for not getting you into that mess. Because that's very difficult that you didn't want to smile at the right time. And so they didn't like you. I mean, it's okay. Good. Good. Good. You dodged the bullet. It sounds like. But at the same time, it sounds like a it sounds like a workshop situation that's fraught with a lot of attention and ego. And it might, I mean, if you're at this point, if you're just writing down what they say and, you know, nodding, and that's not the right way to do it. You might benefit from pushing pause on the workshop and finding other ways to get feedback for your work or having a second opinion set up or having like, you know, after the workshop, I don't know if it's on Zoom or if it's a person or is it on Zoom or in person? Zoom. Great. Great. You can have what you can do is you can have a friend, like a trusted colleague who's smart or a spouse or, you know, somebody that you like and who loves you dearly. You can have a check in with them before you go in and then right after you come out.   Well, not if they're assholes. I mean, I don't know if you like, I'm assuming that we like nice people who treat us with respect. So, so, you know, does that does that make sense? It's tricky, but definitely get some other people to workshop either formally or informally with get another workshop, either in addition to this one, or, you know, in place of this one.   It does. Thank you. I actually had my husband sit in my last workshop, I put him across the room, and he said no, they really liked it. I said no, they really didn't. He said yeah, they really liked it. So maybe it's just me not hearing it. Okay, but also take a little pop, push pause on a little bit, get some space from it, you know, skip a couple classes, skip a couple workshops. You know what I mean? Yeah. You're not so dependent on their opinion. It might be hard to to take even if they love it right now. So, just, you know, step away a little bit and get some fresh air. Come back in a couple weeks or whatever. I feel better. It's 601. It is. That was perfect timing. I loved our little rapid fire questions up there. All right. Thank you. So when are we we're not back next week or the week after that? We are. Yeah, we are back on May 22nd and the sign up is already on the website. So go and sign up and we'll see you then. Thank you all so much. Great questions everybody. Bye.


Coach Ben from Make Money Coaching Sports. Now in today's video, I'm going to try to answer this question that coaches ask me all the time. Coaches will always ask, should I offer one, two, or three time per week sessions? And what I want you to do is take a pen and a notepad out. I'm going to get you to ask yourself a couple of questions here. When you do this, it's going to clarify what your offer should be with the clients that you train. Now what a lot of coaches do is they just always focus on, you know, what's happening right now? How many sales can I get right now? And who are my clients right now? What they don't ask themselves is, you know, what's happened in the past? So the first thing I want you to do is look at the data. How long have your clients been committed to your program in the past and look through the different offers that you've had. You know, if they've been with you one time per week, is there a difference between that client and a client who's been with you that trains with you multiple times per week? And what I want you to do is just be able to create a Google document or spreadsheet with each client, how long they've been committed to your program, and which program they're in, one time per week, two time per week, or three time per week. And I think what you'll do is you'll start to pick apart, wow, I can't believe this client's been with me for this long. I think that'll be the first thing that you'll be able to see. The second is I think you'll start to notice some trends with clients who've been super committed to your program, which program did they pick? And why are they that committed? And you'll start to figure out, okay, well, maybe this is the type of program I should offer to everybody who ends up joining, whether that be one, two or three time per week. Now, what I've seen across the board is coaches that offer two or three time per week type of packages or sessions to their clients, that's only going to work if the client is really committed. And financially, it's only going to work for you if you have them pay upfront for the course of three, six or 12 months. And here's why, because if they buy, let's say three time per week sessions, and they pay you monthly, if they don't come to all the sessions in that first month, they're going to want to drop out, they're going to want to cancel with you, or they're going to want to downgrade. You don't want to be in that spot. You want your clients to be fully committed from day one. So getting them to prepay is going to be the solution. If they say they're that committed, get them to pay upfront. So they're liable to finish those sessions, and it's on them. And you don't have to go back and forth changing your membership with them. Alright, so the first thing we need to do is look at the data. Alright, the second thing we need to do on your end is you have to figure out what is going to be easier for my clients to do this long term with me. And I know what you're probably thinking, well, yeah, of course, it's going to be one time per week. I think that is the simplest way to run this business. And here's why. When kids get busy in the off season, when they get busy during the season, when they have games, tournaments, practices, there's other types of schedule conflicts that will pop up during the year. When all that stuff happens, it's very common that parents will text or call and say, Hey, we can't make it to the session this week, can we get a makeup session? Or hey, you know, when we get to this month, there's too much going on for us. And then what happens is members start to drop out. It's normally because you didn't do a good job planning, or they're coming to too many sessions during the week, and they don't have time to do anymore. So this is where you have to figure out, well, you know, long term, what's going to be the best for my clients. And that could be, right, maybe during some parts of the year, they come two times a week, that per week, maybe through the majority of the months, they just come once per week, you can customize your training program based around, you know, what you want the commitment level to be from your clients.  Alright, or right, they get clients to, you know, pick a program and then they're not accountable to showing up on those days. So there's no consistency. So right now, if you like consistency with your clients, and you want your clients to pay you in full, I recommend look right below here, you'll see my phone number. Text me at that phone number. I've been talking to coaches every single day out of the week for the past six years. Alright, I'm really good at helping you figure out how to craft your program and how to sell it. So clients pay more money upfront. If that's something you need help with, shoot me a number at that text here. And I'd love to chat with you. Alright, see you later.


Greetings and thank you for joining me. This is the first in what I hope to be series of videos on some of the features of ReconNG. And this particular video is going to be about something that I'm rather excited about. I know that when I first started creating a framework I was very, very clear that I wanted to focus solely on reconnaissance type activities, not still the case, but I'm finding new uses for the framework and in this particular instance, exploitation. So this past weekend, or actually last week, I ran into a situation, a penetration test where I was dealing with an XPath injection vulnerability. And through tinkering with the vulnerability and learning a little bit more about XPath injection itself, I've built a XPath brute forcing module that I wanted to share with you, okay? So for the purposes of this demonstration, I've built an XPath injection demo page. Now this is built on the premise that there exists an application and within that application, once you authenticate, you have the ability to echo back all your user account information back to you. And when you go to do this, the application prompts you for your password. You give it the password. It searches the XML, which is actual the data store with all of the username information. It searches it using this particular XPath and echoes back to you your information if your password is correct. Okay, so let's actually exercise this system to see how it works first. So let's say we put in our password as password, and I know this to be wrong. So we should get back nothing in terms of an actual XML element. And you can see here that we don't. The query that's executed, excuse on the server side says username, ppan, password, password, and we get no XML down here. So I know that the password, I know that my password is not telling. Okay, I put that in there. And you can see that here, I get all of my user account information echoed back to me. Very, very simple, very, very contrived that you can understand how this would fit into a real-world situation. So now I want to test for injection. So what can I do? Well, I can try to append a true statement to my password. And if it echoes the same information back to me, then there's a pretty good chance that I'm actually injecting into this particular XPath query and controlling the output. So here I can say, or, I'm sorry, and, one equals one, and I don't want to end it with the trailing single quote because the XPath query is going to do that for me right here. And unlike SQL injection and XPath, we can't comment out the rest of the query. So we have to use everything that's left after our actual injection. So in this case, we'll leave that single quote off. And what this is saying is, well, the username is bpan and the password equals not telling and true, which means that both of these have to be true and we should get our response back. And we see that we do get our response back. Now if I set this to false, then this being false, we'll make all of this false and we should get nothing back. And we don't. So we have now confirmed that we do indeed have XPath injection on this particular application. So now we want to actually get the XML back. We want to see what the XML contents are. Right? And for this, and for the purpose of this video, let's say that it's a blind injection attack. We can't actually tell it to echo back more data than our only user account. All we can do is ask it these true false questions. Well, that's where the module that I have built comes in. So let's go take a look at that. We go into ReconNG and we load XPath. I'm using my smart loading feature here because it's the only module with XPath in the name. And it loads our XPath Bruder module. Now if we show the options here, we'll see that we've got several options to explain these very quickly. We have the base URL, which is going to be the URL to the resource of the vulnerability, not including the parameters. And we'll talk about that here in just a moment. Do we have our basic authentication password and basic authentication username? If basic authentication is being applied in this particular case, you have the ability to add a cookie. If authentication is being maintained through a session cookie, you can add that here. Then you enter the parameters separate from the URL. Now this goes for whether using a GET or a POST request. You'll enter the parameters here and you'll mark the area of the parameters that's injectable with this little inject flag here. And we'll do that here in just a moment. We can set whether it's using the method GET or POST. And then we also need to give it a string so that it has something in the page to look for when the result is actually true. So they can actually determine whether or not it's getting a true or a false result from the injection. So let's start to fill these out. First let's go for the base URL. And here it's my localhostdemosxbathinjection.php. So let's set base URL, enter that in there. We're not using basic authentication or any type of authentication, so we can skip the next three options. Let's go get our parameters. So here let's look at the parameters we used for our first true which was the password not telling without anything else that there are actual legitimate requests. So let's go copy this, set parameters, paste, and then we need to go back to add our inject flag and where did we modify the parameters when we were testing the page just after the password. So we'll go over here, enter the flag and hit OK. It was a post request, as you can see here there are no parameters. So we'll set post to true and then the string we want to look for when we actually have a positive response. Let's go back here and open up our positive response again and I think we're going to go with Peter simply because the nature of this particular page, P pan shows up in the page not telling is going to show up in the page. So we want to use something that's going to be unique and Peter should be unique. So we'll copy that and we'll set our string paste Peter in there and we're all ready to go. So now let's run the module. As you can see it initially did a true test which passed does a false test which passed and then it uses many, many, many queries and you'll see a total here in just a moment to actually brute force the contents of the XML document. We'll give it a moment here just to finish and as you can see 4,301 queries later we have successfully brute force the server side XML file through an XPath injection. I hope you enjoy the module. As always please report any bugs or issues that you run into with the framework and be happy to fix them. Thank you.


You can go on to upgrade it even more with those stasis fragments. Now I've searched a worldwide web to see if anyone's covered this but all I can find are the usual 10 plus minute videos literally explaining minutes worth of content. How's it going guys my name's dpj and if you enjoyed the video leaving a like really helps out and if you like what you see and want to see more be sure to subscribe. So after you complete the story you get a quest for the salvation's group from the Drifter in the Tower. You will also have a quest called the Born in Darkness which you get from the Exiled Stranger upon Europa which you need to complete to unlock those grenades and that stasis subclass as well as an aspect for the subclass. Somewhere along this quest it requires you to have that salvation's group already and you have to locate and shoot five entropic shards where there are tons of guys are where these are all over the internet I will link one down below in the comments section. Now when you get to this stage you can then head back to the Exiled Stranger and she will offer you two weekly quests. At first you probably like me I'm not sure what these are for. These will give you fragments for your subclass. These weekly quests ain't the easiest to do but once you get them done you are rewarded something called a memory fragment which if you take back to the Exiled Stranger she trades you for a few different fragments as you can see on the screen now which will apply to your stasis subclass and these truly affect the way in which your subclass works so definitely worth your time thinking about and like I said there are two of these quests from the Exiled Stranger you can do weekly so that means two fragments you can select from this list. Now there are three of these quests you can do from the Exiled Stranger one for Crucible one for Vanguard and one for Gambit like I said you can pick up two at once. I picked up Crucible and Vanguard I got the Crucible one done and I was rewarded that memory fragment but you guys this is how you upgrade your subclass even more. I only made a video on it as all the other ones I saw were longer than needed so I hope this helps you out. So once you've completed the campaign you've got the salvation's grip you've got the two new grenades for your subclass as well as the aspect you can go on to get fragments like I said we are doing those quests the Exiled Stranger offers two weekly and that is that guys and now the end of the video has arrived I hope you enjoyed it I really do if you didn't even like really helps out and hopefully I will see you on that next one


Hey, I'm Gerd Leonhardt, futurist in Zurich, Switzerland. So recently I made a film called The Good Future. Well that was recently last year in the COVID days in beautiful Lancer Road to Canary Islands speaking about what it would take to make a good future, a future where we all have work, freedom, human rights and so on, covering a bunch of different topics. And now when people watch the movie, it's been quite popular on YouTube, TheGoodFutureFilm.com. They keep sending me a message saying, well, how could you talk about a good future? The future isn't going to be good. The future is looking lousy, the future will suck, right? Because climate change and autocrats and people not sticking to international agreements and everybody not agreeing and not collaborating and of course inflation and all that stuff, right? But the reality is, the future is better than we think, right? As we see the future, so we act and as we act, so we become. So the good future is entirely possible. We just have to make up a mind that we wanted and how we wanted and to believe in it. Thanks. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye


There was a phone pop room but now we need to fight together. We needed to do it a little differently because there was no such thing as a team back then because Yeah, we needed to do that together, but back then I swear to God There was one phone in the building that would ring and it was called the phone pop room And when that phone rang dude, we used to take off up and running. I swear to God, man There will be three people trying to get through the door at one time and you'd get clapped, cropped, hit, blood in those Hope you have the best day of your life. Blood coming out of your eye. This is Andy. How can I help you? Oh my God trucks are coming in left and right. I'm looking out the window. There's 19 of them. Holy cow. Dude It was like we were just obsessed


Welcome. This event has been produced in partnership with the San Francisco Riders Conference and the San Francisco Chapter of the Women's National Book Association, two entities with whom I work to provide writing classes and other learning experiences relevant to the San Francisco Bay Area writing community. And I work for the Mechanics Institute of San Francisco, which is a pioneering library, cultural event center and chess club in downtown San Francisco, founded in 1854. So we're all gathered here to talk or ask a couple of agents about how the pandemic that we're all experiencing will change the publishing game. We have today Gordon Warnock, who is a partner at Fuse Literary, and Andy Ross, who is an agent himself and the former owner of Cody's Books. I'm going to briefly read to you their longer bios and then talk to you briefly about how we're going to organize the talk today. So Gordon Warnock is a partner at Fuse Literary, and he works with New York Times bestsellers and debut authors alike. He represents socially responsible nonfiction, including self help, pop culture, current events, business memoir and narrative. He also, however, covers adult fiction along the lines of high concept suspense and women's fiction, young adult and graphic novels as well. Now, Andy Ross, as I said before, was the former owner of Cody's Books in Berkeley. And he opened his literary agency in 2008. His agency represents books in a wide range of nonfiction genres, including narrative nonfiction, science, journalism, history, popular culture, memoir, and current events. So if you're writing a book about the pandemic, looks like both of these fellows will be someone you should look into. He also represents literary, commercial, historical, and upmarket women's fiction, as well as YA and middle grade fiction. He all both these gentlemen lend their experience at numerous writers conferences, including the San Francisco Writers Conference. And Andy is the author of the Literary Agents Guide to Writing a Nonfiction Book Proposal. And he also has a active blog that you can check out on his website. I'll put both of their contact information in the chess, not the chess room, in the chat room. So you can refer to it as we go through the talk today. All right. So the way this is going to work is Gordon and Andy will each share their knowledge for a few minutes, and then we'll take questions. We have a really large audience today. So please ask specific questions. If you really want to pitch your book, it might make sense to contact the agents separately. And again, I'll put their contact information in the chat room. All right. So let's take it away. Gordon, why don't you start? Sure thing. So a little bit more about me. I got into the business also in 2008. So Andy could speak to this as well. But around that time, it was a really interesting entry into publishing. A lot of people were, frankly, asking me, why are you doing this? There was, if you recall, the beginning of the Great Recession was really coming on. The Kindle had just come out. So e-books were a big disruption. There was all this sort of kind of a panicked atmosphere of, you know, what's going on? What is book publishing going to look like? And so it was a really interesting time to get into the business. And it was also interesting to see the reactions from various people around the industry. And I personally found it to be a very exciting time. I am of the mindset of disruption tends to lead to opportunity, especially if you really take that on and take an active role in it. And that's really sort of a main founding philosophy of our agency. When I got together with Lauren Klain, who was with Lars and Pomada for years, we just sort of wanted to do something new and to, you know, be more active as agents and see what we can do rather than what the old school model of being an agent was. And that was, you know, we sort of took on the unofficial motto of our agency as Gondies, be the change you want to see in the world. And so we saw a lot of change. A lot of things get shaken up and a lot of things, you know, come around to a new normal. And that is really, I think what we're facing right now. We're seeing a lot of disruption, a lot of panic, a lot of, you know, people reacting in different ways. And it's really interesting to see how things shake out as like in 2008, for example, with the whole thing of eBooks being the end of the industry. And like all this other, you know, is supposed to just destroy bookstores and have this widespread chaos and destruction. Now it's almost a silly thought if you think of eBooks as destroying the industry. It's really become a lifeblood for certain types of genres and certain publishers and certain methods. And overall, eBooks have really kind of settled into everything else as just being another format. It was before my time, but I heard there was the same thing with the introduction of the cheap paperback of, you know, it was supposed to destroy the industry at that time. And that became another format that certain authors, certain readers gravitate toward. And so it sort of settled into place as far as how people were able to read, how people were able to tell stories. And before all of this went down, we were seeing a huge increase in market share of digital audio as well. And that really is, you know, now we should be really thankful for all of that because had we entered the current state of things without having eBooks, without having digital audio, without having these ways to get these stories, we would have been in a lot rougher shape than we are right now. And so it's really something that I see as being a change rather than a huge decline overall. Yeah, it will be a short-term difficulty for a lot of people, especially those that are reliant on producing, manufacturing, shipping, hand-selling physical products. That's really taken quite a pinch, but now it's, you know, there are opportunities for different ways to still get stories out there, which is great. And at the same time, I mean, even those booksellers, indie booksellers in particular, are really looking to ways that they can adapt as well. We're seeing a lot of, you know, folks doing curbside pickup and taking orders over the phone and even local indies shipping within their city for free, you know, things like that. They're taking these efforts to continue to sell their physical product. So even that is something that is evolving as well. And I'm sure Andy could speak more on that from a bookseller perspective. But yeah, it's really interesting to see, you know, the consumer end of things, how that's changing, the business end of things, how that's changing. We're all suddenly working from home, and granted, our agency was sort of founded on the remote working model since the very beginning. So we really aren't feeling it professionally as much as some others are. I heard of another really, you know, good old school long standing agency in New York that in late May, they were set to move offices from one location in Manhattan to another location in Manhattan. And that was something that they had just set up as part of their business operation that came on a very difficult timing as that was when New York was becoming a big epicenter for COVID. And sheltering in place was becoming a thing that we were rapidly needing to start doing. And so thankfully, you know, we haven't had those types of difficulties, but some companies out there are. But now it's really interesting and, you know, and really heartening to see, you know, publishers adapt, other agencies adapt. You know, everybody is still getting the job done remotely. You know, books are still being acquired. I have several outstanding offers, including a six-figure debut that I'm working on. And so the industry in itself is still moving along. And it's interesting to see just how people adapt and how people take this as an opportunity to, you know, see what else is possible. I have a project with First Second at McMillan and their editorial director sent out an email just a couple of days ago about how they are looking into other ways of, you know, maybe producing books in different countries rather than being so reliant on China, depending upon, you know, the type of book. And, you know, just all of these things are making us as an industry ask some very important questions rather than get complacent and set in our ways. Well, how can we open up our options? How can we expand things and really make things, you know, a bit more workable for everyone, stable in the long term, able to withstand this kind of disruption and just really continue evolving. It's a really interesting time to be in the business and seeing a lot of shades of 2008.  I overall, you know, see this as being a significant but very temporary setback. It's not like the sky is falling. It's more like the wind is blowing. It's like, what are we going to do to react and to change and to continue moving forward as an industry?  And so we'll ultimately see what that means in terms of, you know, financials and pub dates and things like that. A lot of stuff can get, you know, shaken up in the short term and then maybe certain things are implemented for long-term just how the industry works and producing books. But, you know, we'll ultimately get through this and see what's going on.  It's, you know, we are very familiar with each other's backgrounds and it's always fascinating talking to each other and getting, you know, the different takes on the business. So I think we're in for a good one. So, yeah, I guess I'll turn it over to Andy, what, you know, I'd love to hear his thoughts on things as well. Hi, can y'all hear me? Yes. Well, I feel a little uneasy right now, not because of anything Gordon said, but I just, I can't really visualize what's going to happen after this. It's publishers, the good news is publishers are still buying books. Editors typically are always thinking, you know, I, when I try to sell a book, I try not to make the pitch of whatever the big story is at the time that I'm pitching them, but trying to figure out what the big story is going to be in a year and a half, which is when the books got to come out. And I think that's what editors are used to thinking about it. And they are, you know, they've been, I've been selling books and the same kind I always sold before. I'm a little concerned, actually, I'm quite concerned about the way the retail business is going to shake out at this thing. I would, I'm pretty concerned about physical bookstores, particularly independent stores, but even Barnes & Noble, which is kind of at this point the only chain store we're talking about. And I'm worried that, that just like groceries, books are going to end up being sold online. In some ways, that's okay. But you know, the, a lot of books, particularly the kind of books that I sell and probably Gordon as well, they need hand selling. They are mid-list books. The authors don't have real name brands. And those books are harder to sell online. So I'm concerned about that. But meanwhile, I am still looking for good books. I haven't changed my, I haven't changed my philosophy of how to acquire books, either fiction or nonfiction. And I'm, I'm hauled out here in my basement. But since I've been hauled out here in my basement for 10 years, it isn't that big a change. That's all I had to say. Let's say I have some questions. All right, great. Let's see here. A couple of these questions were answered by your narratives. But how one question, one question is, so publishers are still acquiring books. That's what, that's what I understand. How does, how does this really compare to last year? And are acquisition boards meeting remotely or is everything kind of on pause right now? As far as I can tell, it's not on posse. I, in the last two months, I actually sold more books in a two month period than that I ever have. But, you know, a lot of those things were starting to pipeline anyway. But they are open for business. I've got a lot of things out that are going around New York. And the responses are pretty slow. Because I think everyone in New York, they're all working from home. They're a little disoriented, particularly in New York, as well as they should be. But I am, the books I'm looking for, the same books I was looking for before, I definitely don't want any books about either Trump or the coronavirus. It's just, there's enough of that at home. But other than that, I'm looking for journalism and not fiction. Usually people with platforms. And fiction that's beautiful writing. Some memoirs that have a, that have a high concept, which is what I've always been looking for. And what, oh, sorry, go ahead, Gordon. Oh, sure. Well, it's just, I was just going to piggyback on that, say that it's very interesting to see which publishers are and are not able to move quickly in this environment. You know, I'm working on several deals right now. And some publishers are quick, maybe even quicker than they've ever been. And others are seeing serious bottlenecks. And there are certain areas of the business that are bottlenecking in the acquisitions area, you know, it's more difficult to get different departments and different staff in the same room at the same time, so to speak. And so certain things are taking a lot longer than they used to, but, you know, overall things are moving forward.   Is this something that we could adopt to our advantage? So it's just fascinating overall, I think. So querying should not, you shouldn't pause your query efforts. You should just keep going. This is what you were planning on doing. I'm not going anywhere. So you may even get responses sooner, although I do try to respond quickly. Nothing has changed in the agency for me. Yeah, and that really, you know, it's good to keep that in mind and that some of us are, you know, able to get to things right away and others are dealing with them. Like, for example, I can't imagine what it's like having young children in the home and trying to get this job done right now. And I know some folks were doing that and all the more power to them, I wish them the best. But so I would, I would not stop querying, but I would be patient, you know, a little bit more than than in the past. Another question. Can you either of you comment about how the University Press situation is looking? I sold a book at the University Press for a fair amount of money, and it took me about a week. So are you talking about how they're doing now or how they're doing in general? I sell a lot of books at the University Press because I have a lot of scholars who I represent. And it's a it's a different world there. You know, books I can't sell to trade publishers that still have an audience, a good audience, I can frequently sell the University Press. They're not, they're not obsessed with platform and celebrity. Well, they aren't. It's more of, is the author having a bad chair at Harvard as opposed to, does the author sleep with Oprah's hairdresser? And they've done very well. The University Press is for certain types of books are better than trade publishers. They know how to, they know how to market those books better, and they target the market much better than even a prestigious trade publisher would do. And also they stand behind the books longer. If a book doesn't sell 30,000 copies, it cannot, they're going to kind of give up on it quickly. Whereas, you know, a book that sold 10,000 copies at the University of California Press, that would be a big book for them. And they would do, they would, they would treat it accordingly. Oh yeah, just just in general, you know, I think it would do folks of service to think of publishing more as an ecosystem with a bunch of different parts that all work, you know, to hold up their end of what's going on overall. You know, University Press is very important, and they do their own thing very well as to, you know, big five and indies and on down to sell publishing, everything has its place. And it's good to have, you know, all of these different outlets for all these different types of books. It's oftentimes it's, it's more what is the better fit than what is, what is, you know, the big name, you know, you want the book to be served well. Great. A couple more questions.  So I wonder if you could get closer to your microphone. Yeah. Is this better? That's better. Yeah. Let's see here now. A lot of comments about the sound. One question here. Do you think, maybe you've answered this already, but do you think publishers are a little more timid or do you think they'll take chance, more of a chance now that everything's kind of unstable on a new author or? Well, you know, I would say that they became more timid in 2008. But I can't say that for sure, because I was a retailer in 2008. I think Gordon and I both came in when things started falling apart. And I know they laid off a lot of editors back then, usually the senior editors, who they were paying more. But also they got very skittish about, they became more skittish about the books they were buying. And they started paying a lot smaller advances. At least this is what I heard from agents who were in the business much longer than I was. It is difficult to sell books. All books, people, adult fiction is particularly difficult, personal memoirs, but they're buying books, they're publishing those kinds of books. It just, you have to be good, but it's not good enough to be good. And I can't speak for Gordon, but because I came in later, it's harder for my agency to get big celebrity authors, because there are a lot of these agents in New York who are very successful, are successful because they're successful. They have big names on their website and stuff like that. And so people gravitate to them, but they aren't always that good. Sometimes they're lazy, sometimes they're busy. And if you're not a kind of a big name author, you're probably better off with an agent who might work harder for you than these kind of big celebrity agents. I've gotten a lot, I don't know if I'm answering your question, but I'm answering somebody's question. I've had a lot of clients who work with big agents, and they were not served well at all. The agent gave up on them after they have sent out to five, the same old five people. And I think you want to know, if you're looking for an agent, I think you want someone who believes in what you're doing and will go all, will go the distance. And if you're writing a debut novel, you may end up getting an offer for $2,000 advance.  So you need to find that out. Yeah, that's very accurate in my experience as well. And that publishers want more of a sure bet now than they have before. And I think that will only get even more so as far as nonfiction, absolutely. But fiction as well, you first and foremost need to write a good book and you need to be a good storyteller and serve your audience very well. But elements of a platform may come into that as well as far as how well are you known, how well are you connected with other authors who could give you a boost or even you know, your local booksellers and libraries and so forth, do you have a presence that can help sell books? That could also be important as well. And yeah, I mean, it's a business. It's one of those things where it's really interesting from our standpoint as agents to sort of have one foot in the art and one foot in the business and to be able to translate back and forth and say, okay, this is a good book. Is it a good product?  And so just thinking of it in terms of that as well as some part of what makes the job so interesting and so much fun, in my opinion. But yeah, you know, it is something to manage and something to keep in mind. That's really interesting that you put it that way, the art and the business side. One of the questions is how do you see things changing for genres? Are some types moving more quickly? Are others more sort of stuck in a bottleneck? Or how do you see the genres progressing? I think it's less, there are some generalizations you can make about genres. I know that a few years ago, YA was really big. And now they overpublish and it's become very difficult to sell YA and middle grade has become more wide open. But in general, I think it has less to do, there are some trends. I remember a few years ago, everybody wanted to study neuro psychology or neuroscience and now it's, they're probably too many books. But it's hard to make generalizations about genres. I'm always looking for, in nonfiction, I'm mostly looking for new ideas and concepts that again, because of the business that Gordon was talking about, the book is a product. They, I always try to think about how they're going to get promoted, particularly with physical bookstores having a harder time selling. So it's a lot of books now are getting sold more by media, but this isn't so much about genre as it is about whether the writer and the subject are going to be newsworthy. Yeah, it's really interesting. I think just any question about genre and trends should be prepped by the necessary adage of don't write to a trend. Usually things will move much, much quicker than you can and then the business can behind your book as well.  So it can be something definitely to keep an eye on, but don't try to chase it down. I would say write what you want to write and then see, you know, see how you can get that out there, see how you can fit it into the market as it's moving. But yeah, I mean, the, we can speculate. We don't, we naturally don't have a crystal ball. Anything we can say, oh, this will be big at this time. But just knowing like, yes, why I got saturated. So things move toward middle grade. You know, that's something that is, is a fairly solid bet with the overall, just the overall attitude that people have expressed online. I can see the need for a couple of different types of books. It will, I think at the end of the day, it'll, it'll, you know, come down to catharsis. So we'll see, definitely see some escapism. We'll see, you know, some light fluffy books, romantic comedies, things like that probably will do a lot better books and different settings, people wanting to get out into different parts of the world and explore things because we're physically, you know, trapped inside. We can't, we can't get out and, you know, travel like we used to, I think so. That might see a big growth and also, you know, on the other end, we've been looking at the hints of maybe a resurgence of horror for a while. And that might be another way that, that folks might be able to vent their feelings and connect in certain ways. And so we'll just kind of see what happens. But it's, you know, we can, we can sort of, you know, speculate and see based on just the overall temperature of, of, you know, what people are feeling and what has been selling well, you know, where things can logically progress. So any, I wouldn't listen to anyone who says absolutely this will be the next big thing, but, you know, definitely keep in mind that, that things will change. Great answer. Just touching on a few things that you said earlier. How do you think a new author should start planning their promotion efforts? I mean, how do you think promotion will really change in the situation that we're in now, like events and signings? Now is not, I've got some books that are coming out in the next month or two. And now is not a good time at all because there's really only one story. So my books that are coming out aren't going to get attention. And typically, when we were planning on publication dates, I had some political books. We didn't want them to come out in fall of 2020 because the media was going to be saturated with, with politics. And we felt like they'd have a hard time getting, getting attention. I have no idea what it's going to be like. So I don't, there's not too much I can think about. And mostly I'm just looking to see if the subject is, has got a good concept. I'm going to go off topic again. But does everybody here know what the concept, high concept, the term? Okay. It's a very, it's an annoying, it's an annoying term that came out of Hollywood. But what it means is that the concept is so clear that you can usually state it in a sentence or two. So for instance, I have a book which was a memoir by a woman who was a successful paparazzi for five years in Hollywood. That's a high concept book, because you know exactly what that book is about. I said it in a phrase, not even in a sentence. I had another memoir, which was a memoir of a doctor who treated Ebola in Africa during the height of the epidemic. That's a high concept book.  And everybody's always mentioning that. When they want to be, they say my book is like the Liars Club. That isn't a high concept book. You'd have a hard time explaining in a sentence what that book is about, which is not to say it's not a good book. And it obviously is a successful book. And it was beautifully written. But it's, it's, it's challenging to sell books that don't have that kind of high concept. For one reason, because the agent, the sales rep has to pitch these books to the media and to bookstores, and they only have about 15 seconds. And if a person gets the concept of the book quickly, then it's going to be a lot easier to sell or get a spot on TV. So that's, you need to think about that when you're, when you're before you send your book out to agents. And I don't, I can't give you more advice than that. Some people, some of your books may in fact just not have a high concept.  And I do acquire books and we all acquire books that don't, but it becomes just another challenge that you have to be aware of at the time you're trying to sell it. Yeah, right. It's, it's always, you know, regardless of what you're pitching, you need to know how to articulate that. That's a very important part of, you know, translating this from an art to a product, being able to tell people, you know, what they're getting into, why they should buy this, what kind of experience they're going to get. And so, you know, high, high concept books are something that, that I'm looking for as well, and that a lot of other agents are just because it's, it's so, it's so easy to get the message across in really any format, whether it's a tweet or, or something a little bit more involved. You know, so comparable titles are big on that as well. I might think of a book that I just had the last book in a trilogy that just came out, just came out last month actually, that I sold as Gossip Girl Meets X-Files. And so it's like, you get that right away, what that is, you know, what kind of experience that that is. So just any way that you could think of to, to convey that, and that translates over to promotion as well. Promotion is going to be very different at least in the short term and probably for the coming couple years or so, depending upon how quickly and thoroughly they get this all wrapped up. But yeah, I mean, we have, we have a big celebrity book that was some reliance on a big national tour that was coming out in them in early June. And so that's all scrapped. So where do we go from there? And we have to sort of reassess and see, okay, back to the platform element, back to what Andy was talking about before. What are the strengths of the author? What can we lean on? How can we get that message out? So that person in particular is going to be doing a lot of like Instagram live and, you know, connecting with folks that way, virtually a lot more influencer marketing and, and just, you know, leaning heavily into, you know, online promo and things that, you know, thankfully are a lot more prevalent now as an option. So that you're not reliant on the big tour anymore. And in fact, you know, the big tours were rather rare post 2008 when, when publishers were looking to cut down on costs and, and, you know, looking at other options and things like that, because they don't often, you know, oftentimes they don't pan out. I like following a couple of best sellers online that post photos of the audience of their readings. And sometimes it's a packed house. And sometimes there are 10 people there. And these are New York Times best sellers. And so it's, you know, leaning on what is, what's more affordable, what's more realistic, what are your strengths. We were doing a lot with, with a bunch of different authors who have different, different skill sets and different things that they could do. We did a, and read it AMA and a Twitter chat with our author Julie Kigawa. We did. Oh, who is it? Just, just yesterday, Shannon Dulsky, one of our new debut middle grade authors, some did a Zoom, a Zoom chat with a couple of middle grade authors. And I know some bookstores are doing that as well. Some independents are, I believe, Finney books in Seattle and Greenlight books and some of the others that tend to do a lot more online promo just in general. They have events in the store, but then they have, you know, readings that they do online as part of their regular promo. And now they're leaning, you know, heavily into the one that's realistic right now. So yeah, it really, it really is, you know, seeing what, what you can do, how you can reach the audience. You do need to reach those readers. You can't just say, well, I can't promote my book now because then your book won't sell. It's, you know, in this day and age, you have to be an active promoter of your work as an author or else it's really tough to break out. Wow, that's amazing that you're able to articulate all of that. Thank you so much. It's a lot. So there's a couple of questions in the chat that might be, I guess they're looking for a little guidance about the types of genres or types of book that actually require a nonfiction proposal. Do memoirs need a nonfiction proposal with a synopsis? Maybe just go over a little bit about how one queries an agent with fiction, nonfiction memoirs. With nonfiction, I'm gonna, you should definitely read this book first, which is mine. It's the best one, he said, in modesty. And it's also short and has all my jokes in it, some of which you will have already heard. But it used to, you know, the conventional wisdom used to be is that you don't need a book proposal for a memoir, but I think you really do now. And I would treat it like any other nonfiction book that people are scared of book proposals. Writers are, but you don't need to be. If you know what you're writing about, you know, if your idea for your book is clear, a book proposal shouldn't be that hard. It's a highly structured document. It's like a business plan. And you want to, you want to excite the editor, editors or book lovers, just like the rest of us, and we do get excited. But you also want to make a convincing case that you, that your idea is new, it's important. And the first question they're going to be asking themselves, and you have to be able to answer it, is who's the audience for this book? And are they going to buy it? And there are ways of doing that in a book proposal. You have to do it. You can do comparable books that did very well. But I think if you're doing any kind of nonfiction, you are going to have to have a book proposal. As far as fiction goes, you don't have to have a book proposal. You just have to have a good piece of fiction. If you're a famous author, that would be great, but most people here today aren't. And I do see publishers, I see book deals on publishers marketplace, they're buying debut fiction. It's hard to sell. There's a lot of stuff out there. And a lot of the people writing debut fiction is good. And I cannot say the kinds of books, books that I, you know, bring tears to my eyes at three in the morning, I can't fall asleep. And I can't get interest from publishers. So I can't really say what it's got to be. I know it's got to be good, whatever that means. But this is a really subjective business and what I respond to may not be the same thing as what other editors want. I can just do the books that I fall in love with really and hope somebody else will as well. It's fiction is tough, but it's worth it. And people do read it. I'm looking for it if it's good, but I'm very selective. Yeah, I mean, that's that's all very accurate.  And he knows what he's talking about. It's, you know, nonfiction is, is something that that really is heavily into the product element more, more so than the art and nonfiction usually won't have the whole book finished before you pitch it. It will usually have a couple of chapters at most. And and from there, just a detailed outline and all the business elements, how you're going to support it and where it fits in the market, all the rest of it. Whereas fiction, you don't need a proposal. I'm really of the mindset of flaunted if you got it. And so if you do have like access to huge mailing lists or you wrote for certain magazines or, you know, however you can get the the word out there, regardless, if you're writing nonfiction or fiction, convey that, you know, tell that to the agent, we don't know something exists unless you tell us. And likewise, the publisher won't. And if you, you know, clue us in on on everything that you have, you know, you can then make a good case for for your book as a product on that end.  And a good book proposal is, yeah, it's it's something that a lot of folks hate to put together. But it is, it's really worth it in the long run, even after the book is sold, it then becomes sort of your roadmap to promotion. So you know who your audience is and how to get it out. Yeah, you should, I think also you should look at it as an opportunity. I have done book, I've worked with authors and some of them, they're perfect when I get them, like those, because I don't have to do any work. And some of them have taken months. And I know one of them was a scholarly book for a trade audience. But it took him six months to do the book proposal. And he said that the process was very important for him in figuring out how to structure his book. So if you've got to do a book proposal, you should look at it as an opportunity for an exercise for you to think about the structure of your book and the concepts that you're trying to express in your book. And use the agent. Some agents, I mentioned that they're too busy or lazy to really help you very much. But I know what I do and I know what Gordon does is we are very editorially minded and we work with an author. We know it more or less with publishers. Our authors don't always have that kind of perspective. And we work closely with an author to put their book proposal into the make it a document that really does answer the questions the publishers are going to be asking because agents do know that. Gordon and I have both, I have had 20,000 publisher rejection letters in my short life as an agent. Sometimes I feel like my job is a little like my social life in high school. But in all of that, we have, you know, we've learned what publishers are looking for and what they're not looking for. So think of a book proposal as a good experience. One of the things that happens a lot when I get a book proposal is that an author is trying to shoehorn three ideas that he's in love with into their book. And I see sometimes the two of the ideas are terrible or either that or they at least shouldn't be in this particular book. And we, and in the end of the process of having a book proposal, we have a much clearer concept of what the book is going to be. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I just, I just got a submission that that is like that exactly where it's three ideas in one, one of which should be a very personal project that's not fit for traditional publishing. And another one is a good solid debut and another one maybe at some point down the line.  I mean, that will, just the act of putting together that book proposal will help illuminate that, that that submission that I mentioned, by the way, with that's three different books in one. It didn't have a book proposal was just like a one page pitch. And so had that author done a little bit more of the legwork before reaching out, probably would have figured out, oh yeah, this should be more of a single concept, rather than than trying to do a bunch of different things at once. So it sounds as if when you are evaluating a proposal for a book, that you kind of come up with a strategy for that particular book, and that strategy might not actually work for the next proposal that's in your stack. Is that true? Or do you have a little bit of a formula? Or is it really on a case by case basis? How exactly you decide to pitch that book to a publisher? Well, there's no real formula. That's what makes our job kind of interesting. But part of it is figuring out who to pitch it to. And again, as I'm sure Gordon has had as many rejection letters as I do, we do have a sense of, I mean, there's hundreds of editors, so that we don't always know exactly where they're going. Like, particularly for fiction, which is it's so personal and subjective that, you know, I know a lot of agents in New York say, well, they know the perfect editor for this. They don't. They also say things like, this book, this novel has Hollywood written all over it. Do not go with an agent who ever says that. But every book is really different. And I do know editors who are only looking for history books, who are radical. They like radical politics, or they like conservative politics. So I have a sense about that. But hopefully, when I'm looking for something that's a little bit different. And that requires kind of, you know, thinking outside the box. Yeah, it's really, you know, no two workdays are exactly like, and that's why I love the job so much. I mean, it's every day has different issues and different types of projects and different, you know, things we have to focus on in the moment. There's always something that comes up, always a new emergency that we have to solve. And, you know, it's really, it's an interesting sort of, you know, way of managing everything. But yeah, I mean, there's each book and each author has their own, you know, best way of being handled as far as, you know, getting their work out there and managing their career. And it is, you know, it can be really subjective on the editor side. When you were mentioning that, Andy, I thought immediately of, I just sold a biography that, you know, it got some great interest. So one of the editors that I pitched it to just said, you know, it's this weird thing that that person always just gave me the creeps. Just I can't explain it just for whatever reason. Always, you know, you know, thought that person was a little weird. And I didn't hear that from anybody else that I pitched the book to. And so it's, yeah, it can be very subjective. And that's an interesting part of it as well. Great. You all have such amazing answers. And I'm trying to scroll through the chat here to try to find a question that will be relevant to what you just said. There's a couple of questions here about how a writer should address the pandemic if they're writing a book about set in 2020. Should they address it? Should they put it in the subtitle if there are books about a doctor? How overt should the reference or acknowledgement of what we're going through now be if you're trying to write a contemporary novel? Well, I've tried, when I make pitches, I have to write a query letter too, just like everyone else does. And at first, I used to make pitches that had to do with what was going on now. Like I had a book about how to handle disasters in business. And I was sending it out about the time of the, whatever that oil spill was in Gulf of Mexico, I'm not getting mentioning it. But people responded. They said, hey, you know, when a year and a half comes out, that's going to be out of the news. I had the same problem with the book about the Ebola, the doctor who was treating Ebola.  And I said, I got to get this out right away. And a lot of people rejected it for that reason. They said that this story is going to be over in the area. I did get it published, but I got a lot of rejections for it. So frankly, if I got a book now about the virus, I would probably not be interested, because there's going to be a couple of books coming out about it, usually by very big names like Richard Preston or something like that, who are going to get a lot of publicity and there just isn't going to be room for a lot of other books. So I would try to come up with something that's different. Yeah, absolutely. And from a fiction standpoint, you should always look to properly represent the area that you're writing into. And so if you are writing a story set in 2020, might be difficult to sell if you've just omitted the pandemic completely. You know, you may, you can still write a contemporary novel and set it in 2019 if you don't want to deal with them with all of that as a plot point. And not every contemporary fiction work is going to now be required to mention it. Of course, it has to serve the story. But yeah, I mean, you should definitely keep that in mind. Don't don't just ignore it. Like oftentimes in contemporary fiction, I get some, I get submissions that conveniently omit the use of cell phones or, you know, try to disable the protagonist's cell phone in some way so they don't have to deal with that access to, to information. And that could be that can ring false depending upon how that's done. And so, you know, keep in mind what the keep in mind that you're writing for a reader, right? And that reader is going to have a certain set of experiences that they're dealing with and they're looking to read a story that they can connect with. I just, when I'm looking for fiction, I want something to grab me by the heart. And also, I want something that doesn't sound familiar. And I remember back in, well, I was a bookseller then, but there were like a vast number of books fiction or nonfiction coming out of N911. And at a certain point, they all sounded insane. Some of them did well. The ones by authors with big platforms in particular. But even though it sounded the same to me, if I, if I got novels about the, about the virus, I, it would be a negative at this point. I wouldn't say I wouldn't do it, because if it grabs me by the heart, I will. But I would, I would be skeptical. Yeah, that raises a good point, Andy. That's, if we're living in a post-N911 world and not every novel out there mentions N911, for example. So a lot of the stuff that we're going through right now, you know, we can, it can be beneficial to sort of think outside of your immediate situation and realize that there are, you know, we have had disasters before. We've had to deal with certain things before. So, you know, keeping in mind that that we're not necessarily reinventing the wheel here. We have a, there's been a set of circumstances that that books have gone through before.  All right, we have time for one more question. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how authors and marketing professionals might have to adapt to this new normal. Do you have, do you have some advice on how people can start thinking about their marketing plans now? Do you have any thoughts on what, what might work and what might have to change? Well, you should always be thinking about your marketing plans. But I, you know, I don't think this is the new normal. I think eventually this is going to go away one way or another. And when your book comes out, it's probably, the world's going to be different and we don't know how, but you are going to have to market your book. And when you write a book proposal, that's an important section of your book. They, you know, how you're going to market it. By the way, I'm not answering your question, but that's okay. I, and when you're, when you talk about how you're going to market the book, you don't have to say what, you know, what publishes already know, or you don't want to say things that make them think you have delusions at grander. So I tell people not to mention the New Yorker, not to mention Oprah, or not to mention he pray love, because the chances are you aren't going to get into the New Yorker. And they also, if, if they think you will, they will have thought about that. They want to know what you are going to do to market your book. Okay.  And, and, and trying to make it sound like you're serious and you know what you're talking about. They, a lot of, a lot of authors have a very difficult time with this marketing section of their book proposal.  But you got to sound like one. And you got to sound like you're enthusiastic. And you kind of know something about marketing. Okay. Don't just say I'm going to do a blog and I've got a thousand followers on Facebook. Everybody says that and publishes discount because unless your blog is doing 50,000 views a month, it probably isn't going to sell all my new books. You got to be doing, you don't have to blog, but you got to have social media one sort or another. But that's not going to make, it's not going to change the decision by a publisher. It is something you probably Yeah, it's a very good point. And I would say know your strengths and putting together a book, good book proposal will show you what your strengths and weaknesses are. And along those lines also see what is, what is realistic for the moment that you can expect your book to come out. If you have something coming out in the very near future, well, you can't lean on a tour, obviously, you're going to have to do more online stuff. But yeah, this will also change and will settle in one way or another. We may, we may see touring come back to what it once was, or it might be more limited or a part of the whole, regardless, it will be a part of the whole way that you get the book out there.  You don't want to necessarily join every social media platform just to be on every social media platform. You need to see what your best fit for. If you do a lot with, say if you're an artist, for example, you should absolutely be on Instagram. You should be on a visual medium. If you're doing, you know, how to and instructional works, you should probably be on YouTube and have instructional videos and do things like that. I mean, there are, you know, there are places that the average person goes for a certain type of information and a certain type of experience and really lean into that based on what you're offering and what you're looking to do. And then just also be creative with it, right? And have a good sense of humor about it as well. I mean, everybody's in the same situation. And so, I think of another one of my authors that just yesterday worked with her publisher to release a short video talking about her book that's coming out in July. And she did a short reading that way and joked around about being, you know, having to finish her next book while on deadline in the house with her kids and family and just, you know, connected with readers that way. I mean, even though we're all isolated, we're all looking to make connections. And so, you know, see how you can do that best. All right, one last question. How do you think this new situation might help women agents and women authors? Do you think it'll have an effect? I don't know. You'll have to ask a woman agent. But I'll try. I don't like speaking as not a woman agent. No, I don't think the current situation applies. It's something we just have to get through. Keep writing. And so agents, we're in business. We're looking for books. Okay, so it's treated as business as usual. Yeah, I don't know if that'll have any impact based on any sort of gender orientation or anything like that. I hadn't really thought of that.  And that's just what I ended up connecting with with the submissions that came in. Could have been different if different submissions had come in. So we're just looking as agents for projects that we can connect with, that we can be passionate about, and that we can see a place in the market and a career that we can grow. So that's really what we're looking for. My advice is just to put away your jigsaw puzzles. Well, thank you both for thoroughly answering the questions that I've posed to you and adding a bit of levity to this sort of depressing situation. You're lightening my spirit. And I hope that you are enlightening everyone else's, all of our guest spirits with these positive remarks. So I just want to thank you both and thank everyone who took part in the chat session. Please, you know, feel free to contact Andy and Gordon if you have any specific questions about how your book can be positioned better in this time of uncertainty. So thank you both. Thank you for inviting me. Yeah, thank you. You're welcome. I look forward to working with you again. And thanks everyone. I know this is this, we all would rather be in a face-to-face situation and shake everybody's hand and give the people we know hugs and give people we don't know hugs. I certainly am looking forward to hosting you at Mechanics Institute in the future. And if I don't see you at the San Francisco Writers Conference or at one of the many events that the Women's National Book Association puts on, let's make a date to meet somewhere else. All right. Thank you all. Thanks, Andy. Thanks, Gordon. Stay safe and take care. Bye-bye.


What is a residence, what we call a residence visa sticker in the UAE? We are looking at the new mandatory, we are looking at the new law where stamping in the passports will stop meaning that the residence permit will contain all the relevant information that is guarding that person who is living in the UAE. But again, we need to know or we want to understand what is a residence sticker. Remember, when we are talking about that residence sticker, the residence sticker is normally given to that person who is already in the country and that person may either be on what we call a visa or may be on a work visa that is already inside the country. That's what we call a residence sticker that is being given to the person and remember for you will have a residence sticker, then you will have what you call a residence permit that is being issued to you at that time and what does it mean at this time? It means that you will have for you to have what you call a pink residence sticker as per the new requirement for what you call a residence permit, then that means you need to be above 18 years of age and what does it mean? For you still to get that sticker, you must have passed what you call the medicals. Remember we talked about the medical fitness or what you call the medical fitness in the UAE that for you to be granted the visa or for you to be granted that residence permit, you must have passed what we call the medical test. When we talk about the medical test in the UAE in the seven emirates of Dubai, Syriza, Frizon and we talk about Abu Dhabi, then we are talking about a scenario that the medical test that you must have passed is that you are free of what kind of diseases that are being looked for in that particular time, then you can be granted a visa to live or you can be granted what you call a residence sticker for you to live in that country or for you to work in that country. Remember for people who are planning to come to the UAE you must be medically fit for you to be or to be accepted or for you to be given what you call a residence sticker. So normally what happen is that a residence visa requires applicants who are 18 years and above to undergo what you call a medical test to prove that they are medically fit. They must also pass what you call a security check and also apply for what you call an emirati ID card from the federal authority of identity and citizenship. Remember when we are talking about what you call a residence visa it is issue to an expatriate who or she is already inside the country after entry in the UAE using what you call the entry permit or what you call the visiting visa. Hope I've tried to share something for you for people who do not know what we call a residence sticker in the UAE. Thank you so much for coming back to this channel. By the way don't forget to hit that notification bell because it will be the only way that it will be updated when I upload a new video. Thank you so much. See you again in the next video. It's next from the next creation.