Connecting Our Assets by Rochelle Melander

Note From Rochelle

Dear Writers,

I’m working on plans for 2014 and need your help. What kinds of tools and information do you need to succeed in 2014? Head on over to my Facebook page and let me know!

Need a good book to get you through the Holidays? Take a look at last week’s post on great mystery series books and enter to win a copy of Janet Evanovich’s Notorious Nineteen.

Today we continue planning for the New Year by Connecting Our Assets. If you want even more help to support you in planning for the New Year, join me for the Write Now! Mastermind class on December 18, 2013 at 12:00 PM CST (Note the new date). I’ll be offering tools to help you succeed in 2014. If you’re not already a member of the Write Now! Mastermind class, you can sign up here.

Happy writing,

Rochelle, the Write Now! Coach

 

Connecting Our Assets by Rochelle Melander

Eventually everything connects—people, ideas, objects. —Charles Eames

If you’ve been following along with the blog these past weeks, you’ve been working through some exercises designed to help you reflect on 2013 and plan for 2014. You have:

+Listed both your philosophical and concrete values. (The Reckoning)

+Reviewed and evaluated your creative work. (The Reckoning)

+Created a curiosity list. (The Scavenger Hunt)

+Envisioned new projects (The Scavenger Hunt)

+Mapped your assets. (Mapping Our Assets)

Now it’s time to see how those assets might combine to create some new work for you in 2014.

In Luther Snow’s book, The Power of Asset Mapping, he teaches a simple asset mapping process that works well for groups. I’ve adapted it here for individual use.

Step 1: Map your assets. If you’ve been working along with the tips, you did this last week. If you haven’t had time, check out last week’s post on the blog for a complete overview of this step.

 

 

 

Step 2. Name your assets. For this step, you will need a stack of index cards, a pad of sticky notes, or a stack of small sheets of paper. Transfer each of your assets to a single note card or piece of paper.

 

 

 

Step 3: Play cards! Combine your assets in interesting ways to create actions that use two or more assets. Don’t judge or discard combinations because you cannot see how they’d work in the real world. Just let the cards speak. Sometimes the oddest combinations result in brilliant ideas. The actions you design might be a writing project, article, event, class, performance, or just about anything else you can create. When you have an action represented by a cluster of assets—give it a title.

For example, it seems pretty obvious that I could take assets like wellness, speaking, and YMCA and combine them to create: Teach a Wellness Class at the Y. But what if I combined wellness, speaking, and the local French cooking club—that might make an interesting combination!

Have fun with this. Remember: You are just brainstorming. You don’t have to actually do any of the actions you come up with. Playing with your assets will help you see possibilities from resources you may not have thought of connecting.

Step 4. Create a list. When you are finished with step 3, you’ll have a bunch of actions you could take in the New Year. Transfer them to your journal or a computer document. Hold onto this. You’ll be using it in a couple of weeks when you create your New Year’s goals.

Until then, happy brainstorming!

 

 

 

 

WANT TO USE THIS TIP IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You may, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Write Now! Coach Rochelle Melander is an author, a certified professional coach, and a popular speaker. Melander has written ten books including Write-A-Thon: Write Your Book in 26 Days (And Live to Tell About It). As the Write Now! Coach, she teaches professionals how to write books fast, get published, and connect with readers through social media. Get your free subscription to her Write Now! Tips Ezine at https://www.writenowcoach.com.