It's been a crazy, long time since I've blogged...
And by now I realize that excuses don't mean squat. My good friend and fellow blogger Jim Makichuk started blogging just after I did, but with one big difference - he's as consistent as a healthy egg-laying hen.
Hats off to you Jim.
And it isn't because his life is all peaches n' cream or that he doesn't suffer the ups and downs of his profession. God knows we are all subject to the vicissitudes of life regardless of where we work, what we do, whether we're independently minded, or makes volumes working for a corporation. I'm sure Steve Jobs wasn't perky or motivated every day of his life either.
But consistency is key to success in any endeavor.
I spent half my summer contemplating my existence, asking myself how I was to get out of the doldrums of non-creativity and sink my teeth into something that actually meant enough to me that I would do something about it. And that's when it happened...
I fired my agent.
After nearly two years of essentially non-communication with my literary agent, I did the unthinkable and felt damn good about it.
In the last I would say, 30 years or so, agents have taken on a different slant than ever before. With more people writing books than they can handle, not only do they have their pick of talent, but rather than work from a premise of faith in the author and their product (based of course on the agent's professional opinion), roles have reversed.
You have to prove yourself FIRST before anyone wants to waste their time with your work. Which means you have to be up on tech-friendly self-promotional techniques and hope at some point that you go VIRAL.
I love this term. It has reinvented the Art of Dreaming Big.
Now, once your blog/website/youtube video/podcast gets so many hits, you are considered hot commodity. I think the standard number is 10,000. That when heads slowly start to turn. Before that, you might as well be invisible. 10,000 ebooks, 10,000 blog followers... for youtube videos, I think it's even more...
That doesn't mean everything that goes viral is quality-driven, nor does it mean it will prove itself worthy of a long career (think reality TV stars) but what it does, is get you noticed.
For me, becoming well-acquainted with the bells and whistles of technology poses its challenges, but that's okay.
More and more, I am learning that life is more about keeping the flame alive inside, of remembering what triggers your passions and keeps you on the lighter side of life, than it is about going viral.
More about what I've been up to in the next blog.
Stay with me.
I think I've just found my guts again.
