It Is a Lot of Work Writing about Not Working

Tim Ferris, author of The 4-Hour Work Week, stole a line from me before I was about to think of it and use it in one of my books.

Tim writes, "The truth be told, it is a hell of a lot of work writing about not working."

The nerve of the guy!

As the author of The Joy of Not Working, I should have exlusive right to this line.

Perhaps I will have to sue him.

As Mark Twain once said, "I can’t do any more writing because I’m contemplating a gigantic lawsuit and looking around for a defendant."

Here are a few more quotes about writing by writers.

I you want to be a writer - stop talking about it and sit down and write!
- Jackie Collings

Write drunk; edit sober.
- Ernest Hemingway

I'm a lousy writer; a helluva lot of people have got lousy taste.
- Grace Metalious

When I had got my notes all written out I thought I'd polish it off in two summers, but it took me twenty-seven years.
- Arnold Toynbee

The three great essentials to achieving anything worthwhile are; first, hard work, second, stick-to-it-iveness, and third, common sense.
- Thomas Edison

Ernie Zelinski

Author of How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free

(Over 125,000 copies sold and published in 9 languages.

Unemployed and Spinning My Wheels

I received this e-mail today after updating my Retirement Quotes Website:

Subject: Spinning My Wheels

Dear Ernie,

Hello from Florida!

I discovered your great book - The Joy of Not Working - just a few weeks ago. What you have written has been encouragement to my heart.

I am unemployed. After 18 years with a company, I resigned after enduring a mandated 24x7 on call (no rotation or compensation time provided) during the past two years; I felt like I was being leased out to my family - exploited. I stressed and simply "burned out". I am 51. My father-in-law took my aside and let me know what a "dumb ass" thing I had done - leaving a job without having another one to go to. I let him know - with tears in my eyes - that if I could have hung in there any longer - I would have. I had been looking for other work, but nothing opened up. This was in the corporate IT infrastructure department. Surprisingly, the unemployment office accepted my reason; they did not receive any feedback from my ex-employer. TODAY I received a letter than my employer is appealing - so I have to participate in a telephone hearing on June 16th to try to continue receiving benefits. If not in my favor, they would attempt to recover the benefits received thus far (about $1000). What a mess. I just feel like crying. I am married and two of my sons Paul (16) and Joseph (19) are here with us at home.

I've been applying for work every day (and night); seriously considering self employment rather than continuing to wait in hopes someone will hire me. Rather make something happen, than wait for someone to maybe, maybe, please, please consider hiring me. I do not want to return to the corporate cube farm. I don't want to react/panic to my present situation and return to the same personal hell I had to leave.

I have a blog:

Nothing fancy. I've tried to monetize. No big hits. I love to write (some people have expressed enjoying my writings) and also to be of service to others. (I'm even taking a two week Certified Nursing Assistant prep course to see if something will open up!)

Please pardon my rambling ... I know you have been there and have received many messages from people just like me. I guess I really needed to reach out to someone who understands.

I enjoy visiting your site and always learn something there or on your facebook post.

I really DO want to follow in your footsteps and experience the Joy of NOT Working. I just feel stuck, spinning my wheels.

God Bless and all the best!

W. B.

This was my reply:

Hello W.B.:

First, I sympathize with your situation as being unemployed can be distressing.

I realize that there are many Americans and Canadians in your situation today.

I can't offer any work to you as I work by myself and usually outsource specific projects such as webdesign on Elance.com.

Regarding self-employment, this is not easy but it can be a great way to make a living for the right people.

But this takes committment and a willingness to live a simple lifestyle for a year to 5 or 10 years - although some people can start making money fairly quickly, particularly on the Internet.

You mention that you started a blog on Facebook and tried to monetize it.

In my opinion, a Facebook blog is not the way to make money.

According to the experts, Wordpress is the best way to start a blog.

There is still as much opportunity - probably more - today as there has ever been to make money on the Internet.

In fact, I am just starting and my goal is to make over one million dollars in the next few years.

But as John Reese, an Internet millionaire, says, "Your goal should first be to make one dollar, then $100, then $500 and so on." The problem with 98 percent of the people is they want to make a lot of money instantly and are not prepared to put in the required effort.

I will send you some e-books on Internet Marketing and writing.

Below is an e-mail that I recently got from a woman and my response to her.

Some of my advice may be helpful to you if you are considering being a writer and self-publishing.



Hello Helen:




First regarding self-publishing, I don't care about the stigma. Most of the people who run down self-publishing are unsuccessful writers who think of themselves as being so cool. But most of them are losers who are broke. I would rather be nerdy and rich than cool and broke.

Remember that my retirement book How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free is self-published. This book has already sold over 120,000 copies and has been published in 8 foreign languages since it was released. The book has made over $400,000 in pretax profits for me.

Conduct a search for "retirement" or "retire" on www.Amazon.com and How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free appears in the number 1 position. Better still, search for "retirement book" in Google and the Amazon page for How to Retire Happy appears in the number 1 spot — out of over 29 million webpages!

So why does my self-published book beat out all the other retirement books, including retirement books by AARP, the Wall Street Journal, and Ten Speed Press's What Color Is Your Parachute for Retirement? The answer is that my self-published book is better than all the other retirement books done by the major publishers. Results don't lie.

I intend to sell 500,000 copies of this book and I sure wouldn't be able to do this with the thinking patterns, beliefs, and behaviors of the "cool" writers who run down self-publishing.

Interestingly, I just read an article by some expert who claimed that in the near future the major publishers may be eliminated from the chain because authors will deal with the online retailers directly, particularly for e-books.

If you want to pursue self-publishing, check out these articles.

In the first article, pay particular attention to my comment in the comments section. My comment is the first one.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zetta-elliott/breaking-down-doors-my-se_b_473336.html




http://web.redroom.com/blog/ernie-j-zelinski/foreign-rights-how-i-have-arranged-101-book-deals-without-going-frankfurt-book




How to Get a Distributor for your self-published book

http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/blog/2009/01/12/how-to-get-book-distribution-for-a-self-published-book/



Check out all the articles on self-publishing here:

http://blog.writersdigest.com/norules/CategoryView,category,SelfPublishing.aspx



Here is a recent Writers Digest article relating to Self-Publishing

http://blog.writersdigest.com/norules/2009/11/25/The3SelfPublishingPathsYouShouldUnderstand.aspx



Here is a great article about book marketing and how a professional looking website (most people don't realize that ugly websites make a lot more money than professional-looking ones) is one of the last things on which you should focus.

http://www.fonerbooks.com/2010/01/what-is-book-marketing-anyway.html



You bring up the issue of e-books. At this time, I not a big fan of e-books. If you check out the competition for my How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free, most retirement books are on Kindle and in many other e-book formats.

The only e-book format that you find for my retirement book is a PDF format of half the book that I give away for free.

I don't think that there are great profit margins in e-books right now.

I just came across an article the other day saying that the top 14 best-selling books for the Kindle on Amazon were the ones that were for free.

Having said that, if you want to put any of your books in e-book format, check out Smashwords at http://www.smashwords.com/.

Smashwords will put your books in all e-book formats including Kindle and you will even get more in Amazon royalties by going through Smashwords than going directly to Amazon.com.

I will forward an e-mail that I just sent to a woman who asked me about the opportunities for writing in this day and age.



So long for now,

Ernie J. Zelinski
The Creativity Guy Too Prosperous to Do Mornings
Best-Selling Author, Innovator, and Content Creator for Retirement Resources
Author of the Bestseller How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free
(Over 120,000 copies sold and published in 9 languages)
and the International Bestseller The Joy of Not Working
(Over 240,000 copies sold and published in 17 languages)

No Job and Little Money But Still Inspired

Here is the latest e-mail that I received about my books:

----- Original Message -----
From: Nadine Myers
To: vip-books (at) telus
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 7:54 AM
Subject: You're Awesome!


Hi Ernie!

I just needed to contact you today because a fire has been lit in my belly and I have to say that I believe that it is mostly because of you!

A couple of years ago a few things happened that made me realise that the corporate world was not for me. I tried network marketing around my day job which I also found was not for me, so just went from contract role to contract role and decided I needed a bigger change and there seemed to be a big pull towards Canada. So here I am!

I am back working in the Corporate world but with the mentality that I will only be here until I get bored then I will move on. I am busy with a non-real job outside of this (www.NabThatJob.com), however I am not earning enough money yet from this to leave my day job.

I also have a lot of debt (not unlike yourself when you first started your life of freedom) and no money behind me, as well as some investments that require payments every month.

I first came across The Joy of Not Working in a second hand book shop and reading about how you started lit a flame in me and inspired me further.

After many frustrations in my current job I was lead to your new book, Real Success Without a Real Job and as soon as I started reading it last night I could not put it down!

You are such an inspiration to me and I want to thank you because I know that I will be there one day very soon.

I am weighing up options and at this stage I'm thinking I will stick out this job for one year to get my debts cleared and reduce my outgoings every month. I will then be able to comfortably live on minimum income and therefore will have less pressure to pay bills etc. I do not have many friends in Canada and so no-one to fall back on here, although that does not scare me.

I just needed to thank you for leading such an awesome path and for writing these materials to help people like me to feel more comfortable about this leap out of society!

I look forward to bumping into you in one of your many offices (i.e. a coffee shop) one day!!

Have an awesome day & rest of the week!

Cheers,

Nadine


Nadine Myers
Nab That Job in Australia!

Check out:

Fun Things to Do at Work Until You Retire

Jobs for Retirement

The Joy of Not Working Is Leisure Literature

Here is an e-mail that I just received about The Joy of Not Working:

----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2009 1:52 AM
Subject: Forward To Mr. Zelinski


Dear Author of The Joy of Not Working

I, as of many, have just read your latest masterpiece. Words cannot dictate the relevance of your "leisure literature". I for one will not sit idlely by as the world turns by, or will I? I just would like to add a minor saying I thought of while absorbing your "work"; "if it is not-doing then don't do it!" Thanks for your odaciousness?, and optimism? (sorry, it just fits!)
Your friend,
Nathan O. Stevens
Victoria, Canada (well...now)
Sent on the TELUS Mobility network with BlackBerry

Here is one of my recent blogs on my Red Room Webpage: Reasons You Gotta Love a Recession ,

Turkish Proverbs about The Joy of Not Working

Here is an e-mail that I recently received about The World's Second Best Retirement Book from someone in California who apparently is not having any fun at work :

----- Original Message -----
From: Tom Scott
To: vip-books (at) telus (dot) net
Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2008 2:59 PM
Subject: Re: The Joy of Not Working .

Hello Ernie,

I just picked up your book The Joy of Not Working this weekend. The title sort of grabbed me. I have been out of work since April and (so far) have found very little joy in it. Then I came to page 50 and fig 4.2 with the two boxes of before and after for a workaholic. It was me. My marriage had been bad for years and finally ended earlier this year. In effect I had already crossed off one item in my box a long time ago. Then my employer decided to help me cross off the other one. No wonder I felt lost, desperate, alone, and with no idea where to turn. The only two things that mattered to me were gone. From that I went through one compulsion after another. First women (the serial dater), exercise, you name it. None made me happy. Now I realize it’s not about finding a passion, it’s about finding all of them. I am going to get to work right now filling up my box.

Thanks for steering me in the right direction. I’ll take it from here.

Tom

Sonoma, CA

And here are three Turkish Proverbs that I used in my speech about The Joy of Not Working to the Turkish National Society for Quality in Istanbul on November 26th.

1. All work and no play will make such a dull boy.
   — Turkish proverb
2. If God closes one door, He opens a thousand others.
   — Turkish proverb
3. There is no right way to do a wrong thing.
   — Turkish Proverb
   

Check out The Money Cafe:

Just Finished Reading The Joy of Not Working

Following is the most recent e-mail that I received about The Joy of Not Working: A Book for the Retired, Unemployed, and Overworked that was sent to me by Eric Clarke of British Columbia.

----- Original Message -----
From: Eric Clarke
To: vip-books (at) telus.net
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2008 3:58 PM
Subject: To ErnieZelinski - Thank you!


Dear Ernie,

I have just finished reading the The Joy of Not Working. What a truly
enjoyable and thought provoking book. As a recent retiree you have
helped me to remember what is most important in life and generously
shared your personal experiences, thoughts and some tools to help
me reconnect with those things.

I am looking forward [to retirement ]with excitement and anticipation as I begin this
journey and hope that at the end I find I have grown into a fully
developed and happy child.

Thank you.

Eric Clarke
Email - chimiera (at) shaw.ca
Tele: 573-5982

Here are the covers of some of the other Foreign Editions of The Joy of Not Working:

French Edition

Spanish Edition

Japanese Edition

Czech Edition

Greek Edition

German Edition

Turkish Edition

French Edition - Canada

Dutch Edition

Korean Edition

Italian Edition

Chinese Edition - Traditional Characters

Chinese Edition - Simplified Characters

Portuguese Edition

Polish Edition

Indonesian Edition

An Online Interview about The Joy of Not Working

Below is an online interview I did about The Joy of Not Working for A New Dawn Blog:

1 - Tell us a little bit about yourself. (i.e. where you were born, where you grew up, etc.)

I was born in Athabasca, Alberta, Canada and was raised on a farm around Grassland, Alberta until I was 14 and then finished high school in Lac La Biche. I didn't know what career path to choose, but I was very good at mathematics, trigonometry, and physics. So, on the advice of my teachers, I stupidly enrolled in engineering at the University of Alberta in 1966. In my second year of Engineering I missed over 85 percent of my classes and still ended up with the 7th highest grades out of 250 engineers. Even so, it took 7 years for me to complete a 4-year program because I quit twice and stayed out a year. You can read more about this in an article called The Joy of (Not) Engineering.

After working for Edmonton Power for five and a half years, I was fired for taking two months of unauthorized vacation. My firing was, in fact, the best thing that ever happened to me because I hated being an engineer. (Just as important, I hated corporate life.) As Hal Lancaster once said, "Getting fired is nature's way to telling you that you had the wrong job in the first place." I am proud to say that I have not had a real job for 28 years.

2 - For those who have not read the book, how would you describe the central idea in the The Joy of Not Working??

The Joy of Not Working is all about learning to live every part of your life - employment, unemployment, retirement, and leisure time alike - to the fullest. If you have a job, the book is about how to thrive at work by being more leisurely. If you are unemployed, the book will help you be happier than most people who have jobs, simply because happiness is a matter of choice, whether you have a job or not. If you are retired, The Joy of Not Working will help you find just as much purpose - even more - as you had in your career life.

3 - Some people have read the book and are left with the impression that you are encouraging people to be lazy and unproductive. What do you say to that?

On the contrary. I am encouraging people to have a better balance between work and play, which will make them more productive. Take me, for example. I work only 4 or 5 hours a day and earn an income twice that of most people who work 8 hours a day. This makes me 4 times as productive as the average person.

4 - If one was to follow your advice and start leading a life of leisure, wouldn't it be quite difficult to maintain the same standard of living?

First, the important question that arises is "Does one really have to live at the same standard of living?" Studies show that Americans were happiest during the 1950s. Today Americans have houses two to three times as large as in the 1950s, eat a lot more (look at all the fat people in the US), and consume two to three times as much. Yet they are not as happy. The point is that standard of living does not contribute to happiness. I have a friend who is 62 and lives on $434 a month. He actually saves some money certain months. The important point is that he is happier than 95 percent of people in society.

Second, if you become more leisurely, you may just end up making more money, and increasing your standard of living if you want to. That has happened to many people. Tim Ferris (whose book I recommend later) used to work 12 hours a day and earn $40,000 a year. Now he works 4 hours a week and earns $40,000 a month. Similarly, several people I know work hard 8 to 10 hours a day and earn $50,000 to $60,000 a year. I leisurely work only 4 hours a day and have an pretax income of about $125,000 a year. This is about working smart and not hard - but most people are too hard-headed to grasp this concept and actually follow it.

5 - What do you think is the biggest factor that stops people from changing their lifestyle?

Most people are too programmed by society and society's values. They don't want to risk and be different. As a matter of fact, they are so plugged into mainstream thinking, they don't realize how programmed they are. This even applies to the highest of educated people such as doctors, lawyers, dentists, and university professors.

6 - Now that you are living a life of leisure, how are you spending your time?

I usually sleep in until 11 AM or noon. My first priority is going for a rigorous run or bike ride. (This normally takes about one and a half hours of my time. After I get out of my house, and arrive at one of my favorite coffee bars, I spend about 4 hours a day working. Another 2 hours is spent talking to people in coffee bars. The evening is left open and I can do a variety of things including visiting people, reading, or meeting someone for a drink in a bar. I normally get to sleep around 3 AM after reading the newspaper and having a snack.

7 - Name a book that you think everyone should read, and why.

The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris. This book is written for ordinary people who want to accomplish extraordinary things with minimal time involved. Some of the most important principles in this book are:



1. Get unrealistic.
2. Practice the art of nonfinishing.
3. Cultivate selective ignorance.
4. Do NOT multi-task.
5. Outsource as much of your life as you can.
6. Being busy is a form of laziness - lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.
7. Forget about time management.

Here are four of several favorite quotes from The 4-Hour Workweek


1. If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.
2. The blind quest for cash is a fool's errand.
3. Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for "realistic" goals, paradoxically making them the most time-consuming and energy consuming.
4. The fishing is best where the fewest go, and the collective insecurity of the world makes it easy for people to hit home runs while everyone is aiming for base hits.


8 - Do you have any plans for a follow up to the Joy of Not Working?



I have already written and published 3 follow-up books related to The Joy of Not Working which are:




• The Lazy Person's Guide to Success: How to Get What You Want Without Killing Yourself for It


• Real Success Without a Real Job: The Career Book for People Too Smart to Work in Corporations


• How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free: Retirement Wisdom That You Won't Get from Your Financial Advisor


For the record, How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free was rejected by 35 publishers - even by my own publisher Ten Speed Press that publishes The Joy of Not Working - and had to be self-published.

With an order that I received last week from Allstate Financial for 3,700 copies, How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free has now sold over 100,000 copies.

I have also sold rights to nine foreign publishers. The cool thing is that I have now realized a tidy pretax profit of $350,000 on this self-published book - much, much more in earnings than I would have received from a major publisher.

For anyone interested, I provide over half - mainly the top half - of How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free as a free E-book download on the Creative Free E-Books Webpage at the Real Success Resource Center ( http://www.real-success.ca/free_ebooks.html ) as well as on The Retirement Quotes Cafe.


NOTE: I have also written these books:




• The Lazy Person's Guide to Happiness


• 101 Really Important Things You Already Know, But Keep Forgetting

9 - What advice do you have for someone who will be cutting back on work and investing the money they have now?

Contrary to popular belief, you can actually cut back on work and earn more money. Again, work smart and not hard.

When it comes to the secret of handling money, there are two principles: The first one is: Spend less than you earn. If this won't work for you, then the second principle is definitely for you: Earn more than you spend.

A lot more North Americans could retire early and have a comfortable retirement if they followed my principles. As I tell my friends who claim they have money problems, "You don't have a money problem. You have a serious thinking problem." Unfortunately, most people in North America end up believing that they "need" all the things that they buy. Fact is, most of the things people buy are "wants'. Regardless of who you are, your needs have always been provided. Plain and simple, if they weren't, you would be dead! So stop fooling yourself that you need all those material goods to be happy and you will have no problem saving.

I semi-retired when I was 35 and had a net worth of minus $30,000. Even though I have worked less than half of my adult life and have never made a penny in house appreciation (simply because I rented for all these years), I can retire comfortably.

I recommend this well-titled book for which I have adapted a short review from two other reviews:

You're Broke Because You Want to Be: How to Stop Getting By and Start Getting Ahead, by Larry Winget.

The author is a no nonsense guy and a master of tough love. This book will tear down every excuse you can think of and show you that it's your choices that are making you broke. Warning: The author is harsh. So if you get upset about that, maybe you should pass on this one, continue to blame your problems on someone else, and end up broke in retirement.

To be sure, there's no sweet talk in Winget's advice, who summarizes money management to these points: Get off your duff and start doing the hard work necessary to make financial success happen. His advice includes: Give up cable TV. Get a cheaper car. Move to a more-affordable home. Live on what you earn.

10 - Can you tell us who you will be voting for in November, and why?



I will not be voting in November because I am Canadian. If I could vote in the American election, I would vote for the Democrats even though I am more of a conservative than a socialist. To me, the Republicans have absolutely no integrity. They talk about fiscal responsibility but are running unheard of deficits after taking power from the Democrats who under Bill Clinton were running surpluses.

The situation is no different in Canada. Again, to me, the Conservatives have no integrity in regards to fiscal responsibility. The Liberals were much more fiscally responsible when they were in power than the Conservatives are now. So on October 14th, if I vote, instead of voting Liberal, I will actually vote for the New Democrats (a socialist party!) simply because the New Democrat candidate in my riding has a chance of beating out the Conservative candidate.

Indonesian Edition of The Joy of Not Working