Between Pen and Paper: Flaneuring Through a Writer’s Mind – Writing at the Speed of a Melting Popsicle

By Andi Kopek

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A popsicle.

A little girl is holding a popsicle in her hand. The color is red.

It’s so hot—so steaming hot—that the popsicle is dripping on her fingers, but she doesn’t mind. She doesn’t even notice it. She licks it innocently. The popsicle drips through one finger, then the next, down her little pinky, onto her clothes, and finally, the ground. She doesn’t mind.

Why are popsicles called popsicles? Pop-sicle. From icicle? But why POP-sicle? Why not sun- sicle? Or sweet-sickle? Or slash-sickle?

When I was a little boy, I didn’t eat popsicles. Maybe ice cream on a stick—but I didn’t like them. They dripped too quickly. Dripping again. It was unpleasant. Nasty. I don’t like mess.

When I was a child I liked eating brine cucumbers instead—from a big barrel with herbs. From a local store with vegetables. Zielona Budka it was called. The Green Hut. I forgot the name of the herb. The name of the herb. The herb. But the smell was so distinct. Summers weren’t this hot or humid then. Definitely not this humid. They were bearable.

But I couldn’t step into the stream that flowed near our house. A sign nailed to a small pine tree said “Do Not Enter.” There was always this thin black line on the banks—pollution. So strange, isn’t it? That rivers are polluted? Dill. It was dill.

Same with the Baltic Sea. You’d walk along the shore and see a thin line of oil—leaking from tankers, maybe. How much oil needs to spill to leave a line like that? Shorelines stretch endlessly. So it must be a massive amount. And yet it’s just… normal. There was no way to talk about it. No one raised it as a question. No one wanted to listen.

It seemed hopeless to raise this issue. Hopelessness was everywhere. And it’s what made me move. Made me search for something else—some place where hope exists.

Because a hopeless man can’t make a difference. That’s unbearable. And passion? You couldn’t express passion. If you had feelings, you had to bury them. And you’d be dead. Had no feelings? How can you live without feelings? Also dead. Either way—passion or apathy—you were dead. So I looked for a place where you might feel alive. Really alive. And I moved.

And when I found it—disappointment. Because people are the same. Buildings are, pretty much, the same. At least similar. Some things differ, but at the core, no real changes. It was rather surprising. And disappointing.

No matter where you live, this side of the pond, or the other, this continent or that—people behave the same. Systems differ, sure. Maybe there’s more of one thing here, less of another there. But manipulation is the same. The desire to control others, the masses? The same.

Maybe there once were tribes, cultures, societies driven by different values. Not just different beliefs—different internal forces. Not focused on profit, progress, goals. But they’re gone.

Crushed. At least, they’re no longer the dominant force.

Put a peaceful person in a room with someone okay with killing… Guess who survives? The second one doesn’t blink and pulls the trigger. No hesitation. And no guilt afterward. No guilt afterward is terrifying. Can give me nightmares. That’s how people with high morality die.

That’s how reflective people disappear. That’s how good people don’t survive. Because the ones willing to negotiate, to coexist, to cooperate… by definition, they are always at a disadvantage. The ones who don’t care about destroying them? They win.

That’s how the world is skewed. And that balance? It will never be restored. Never existed. The imbalance repeats itself. One generation to the next. Until the skew becomes so extreme that people go mad and destroy each other. And justify it, of course. And then the remaining few start the cycle again.

That’s the story of human life on this planet. It’s so short. And so cyclic. We pride ourselves on our “progress.” We love talking about how our societies have “evolved.” But if you study history carefully, you’ll see, nothing is new.

We just forgot. We forget. We forget. We forget and repeat. Amnesia is built into the system. Everything from the past returns—distorted. A ghost, shifting form, always changing. We think we know it. But we don’t. We think we learn from history. But we don’t. And even if we do—it means nothing. We can’t or don’t want to act on it. Well, the ones who want, usually don’t have enough power. And if they make a change, it is rather short lived. Because of the nature of man.

So how do you enjoy life, knowing this? Knowing that we don’t learn? Knowing that goodness is always at a disadvantage? How do you live like that?

Maybe…

Maybe we just start with a popsicle. On a hot, humid, sunny August day.

At a brewery where kids run around and play…

Author’s Note

This piece was created using a stream-of-consciousness technique, beginning with a real observation of a child holding a melting popsicle at a local brewery during this summer’s extreme heat. Because my writing speed lags substantially behind the pace of my thoughts, I decided to record them instead—capturing this internal monologue as it unfolded. It was recorded on an iPhone 13Pro Max using the Voice Memos app, transcribed via Otter.ai, and lightly edited for readability.

As both a neuroscientist and writer, I’m fascinated by stream-of-consciousness as a way of capturing thought in its raw, unfiltered form—before logic and language shape it. Writers like Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Clarice Lispector explored this terrain, but the tone and emotional cadence of this piece are perhaps closest to the style of Thomas Bernhard. The process felt amazing, like creating in a fascinating, improvisational way, as if the thoughts were composing themselves in real time.

Final thought: One of my previous columns explored writer’s block. The stream-of- consciousness approach can be a powerful antidote for the block, allowing creativity to freeflow.

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Andi Kopek is a multidisciplinary artist based in Nashville, TN. With a background in medicine, molecular neuroscience, and behavioral change, he has recently devoted himself entirely to the creative arts. His debut poetry collection, Shmehara, has garnered accolades in both literary and independent film circles for its innovative storytelling.

When you’re in Nashville, you can join Andi at his monthly poetry workshop, participate in the Libri Prohibiti book club (both held monthly at the Spine bookstore, Smyrna, TN), or catch one of his live performances. When not engaging with the community, he's hard at work on his next creative project or preparing for his monthly art-focused podcast, The Samovar(t) Lounge: Steeping Conversations with Creative Minds, where in a relaxed space, invited artists share tea and the never-told intricacies of their creative journeys.

This Crazy Writing Life: Amazon Ads Part Three–Don't Forget to Press the Clutch...

By Steven Womack

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So you’re the type that wants to be in charge, right? The thought of targeting your Amazon Ads to a bunch of folks you may or not want the ad to go to is a real problem. Maybe you don’t trust the Amazon algorithm. Maybe you’re the kind of person who would rather drive a manual transmission than an automatic.

Okay, there’s room for all types. So how do you get started?

In last month’s installment of This Crazy Writing Life, we pondered Amazon’s automatic targeting and how the Amazon algorithm based its decisions on your metadata. Metadata is a term you see tossed around a lot these days. I kinda sorta think I understand what metadata is and how it works, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an actual definition of the word.

So I did what people do these days: I Googled it.

Metadata, according to that internet bastion of absolute truth (Wikipedia), means “data that provides information about other data, but not the content of the data itself.”

Say what? Data about data?

Continuing on with Wikipedia, metadata is data that gives you insights into other data. There are numerous kinds of metadata: descriptive, structural, administrative, reference, statistical, legal… A lot to take in, more than we actually need.

Before we get too deep into the weeds on this, let’s narrow our focus to the question of what is metadata for indie publishers and what does it do?

Now we’ve bitten off a bite-sized chunk. Metadata for indie publishers is the information (data) that will help lead a customer to your book. This information primarily falls under two main classifications: keywords and categories. If you’re going to attempt to manually target your promotions efforts on Amazon (or anywhere else), you’re going to have to get your head around these two dynamics.

Keywords are words or phrases that, when a potential customer types them into the search bar, takes them—hopefully—to your book. If you’ve written a book called Pole Vaulting for Dummies, then when someone types “pole vaulting” into the search bar, your book is going to be in the pool of books that Amazon pulls up.

But there’s more to it. Not only do good keywords make your book show up in search results, but if you’re running a Sponsored Products campaign (see the last two month’s columns on Amazon advertising), then your ad gets featured in pages for other books that pop up as a result of the search. If you include the keyword phrase “Mark Twain” in your metadata, then your book will not only show up in search results for Mark Twain, but as a Sponsored Product ad on every other book page that’s pulled up.

So you’re beginning to see how important this is, right? The right keywords will make your book pop up all over the Amazon place. But the wrong, or ineffective, keywords will consign you to obscurity.

It’s not just the keywords, though. You can also control how closely the customer’s search results match your keywords. There are three broad match types in the Amazon ad platform.

Exact matches are just what the name implies. You know exactly what search query you want to target. Exact matches include close variations like plural or singular versions of the phrase, but you need to be as specific as possible and you need to enter the words in the exact order you want them to appear in the search. If your keyword phrase is “private eye noir novels,” then “noir private eye books” isn’t going to give you a hit.

If you choose the phrase match option, that means you have a precise idea of what you’re trying to target, but you’re willing to be a little looser on the interpretation, like if your keyword phrase is part of a longer phrase. In other words, if your keyword phrase is “private eye noir novels” and someone types in “private eye noir novels set in New Orleans,” you’ll get a hit.

The third option is the broad match. This is the match type that will give you the largest number of hits, but you run a real risk that the some of the hits may be so far off base that they won’t give you any results. Ricardo Fayet in Amazon Ads For Authors goes so far as to recommend that you not choose broad match as an option in Sponsored Product ads.

So let’s look at Category targeting. What are categories on the Amazon platform?

Imagine that Amazon.com was a brick-and-mortar bookstore. If you were looking for a romance novel, you’d either go to the store directory and see which shelves housed romances or you’d just wander around until you found the right shelf. Same with mysteries, suspense/thrillers, or books on car repair or stock trading…

It’s vital that your book be assigned to the right categories. In a brick-and-mortar bookstore, when a book’s put in the wrong category, it’s misshelved. If someone looks long enough and hard enough, they may find it. In the vast online bookstore known as Amazon, though, when your book’s in the wrong category, it’s lost.

But it’s not just a matter of readers being able to find your book. Each category within Amazon (with the exception of some categories that we’ll touch on in a second) has its own best-seller list. The competition within each category varies tremendously. In some niche categories, you might need to sell only a dozen books to be an Amazon number one best-seller.

So what are the exceptions I mentioned? In a recent article on Amazon categories, Kindlepreneur guru Dave Chesson writes that 27% of the categories you can pick on the KDP dashboard are what he calls “ghost categories.” These are categories that don’t have a name, don’t have a category path on the Best Sellers page, and if you select it, your sales don’t count toward a bestseller tag. You almost always want to avoid putting your book in one of these.

It’s also important to understand that over half the categories on Amazon are duplicate categories. Which means if you select three of these categories (and three is all you’re allowed), then you’re really only picking one.

Here’s the other challenge when you’re determining which categories to place your book in: there are over 19,000 categories!

Yep, Amazon’s a dang big bookstore.

And Amazon’s constantly changing the rules. As I mentioned a few lines earlier, you can request that your book be placed in three categories. You used to be allowed ten, but the rules changed. Even then, there’s no guarantee your book will wind up in the categories you want. Amazon can deny you the ones you want or stick your book in other categories without even telling you. It’s important to understand how this complicated system works to get the best results. Embed keywords for a specific category in your book description, your book’s content, or even the title. That’ll help.

Do you have a sense now of how big a task this is? As I’ve mentioned in previous columns, if you’re going to embark on an indie pubbing journey, you’ve got to constantly be studying, learning, observing. This is bidness, folks, and ya’ gotta take it seriously.

How do we manage to get our heads around all this without spending forty hours a week studying how all this works. After all, most of us have lives of some kind and other demands on our time.

The best tool I’ve found, by far, is another offering from our friends at Kindlepreneur. Dave Chesson’s made a career out of mastering the indie publishing space and Kindlepreneur’s PublisherRocket is one of their best tools for mastering the keyword and category challenge (let me just jump in here, as I have before, and say with complete transparency that I’m not an affiliate with Kindlepreneur or anyone else; I’m not making a buck off this if you buy it; I’m just happy to share something that really works).

PublisherRocket enables you to discover categories and keywords, analyze your competition, and develop Amazon Ads—all in the same place. Let’s do a quick case study here, based on my earlier reference to the author who writes a book called Pole Vaulting For Dummies. You’re the author and you’ve written the book, copy-edited it, put together a great cover, and you’re ready to pull the trigger on KDP.

Fire up PublisherRocket and type in the “keyword search” bar the words pole vaulting.

Turns out there are a slew of books published on Amazon about pole vaulting (didn’t know it was such a hot area). Let’s click on the first one, Alexis Monroe Kiefer’s The Pole Vault Coaching Handbook.

PublisherRocket tells us that Ms. Kiefer’s book on pole vaulting was published 1647 days ago, its Amazon Best Seller Rank is 975,271—not great but I’ve seen worse—and it’s 78 pages long. This book does not have targeted keywords in its title, and it costs $20.00. PublisherRocket estimates its daily sales as $3.00 and its monthly sales at $20.00.

Okay, it’s not likely the author’s making a living off this book but, hey, she’s slinging a few copies here and there.

Then you hit the “See The Categories” button and the good stuff happens.

This book is only listed in two categories:

Books>Reference

Books>Sports & Outdoors>Other Team Sports>Track & Field

For each category, there’s a button to get Insights on that category (Sales to #1, Sales to #10, Average Publishers Price, and the Monthly Sales of Category’s Top 30 Bestsellers). Then there’s another button that gives you all the Keywords for that category.

Are you beginning to get a sense of how valuable that data is? I read an article about how date is the new oil—those that have got it control the market and a lot more. I believe that’s true.

Let’s wrap this one up. The last three installments of This Crazy Writing Life have been designed to just barely break the ice on Amazon advertising. I just wanted to give you a start, but if you really want to do a deep dive into making this all work, then you’re going to have to spend more time than we’ve had here. Ricardo Fayet’s Amazon Ads For Authors is the best and most complete resource out there. I recommend starting with that.

Once again, thanks for playing along.