It’s so easy to see why many writers simply give up on their dreams of getting their work in print: lots of hard work, excessive amounts of patience and no guarantee that it will ever go anywhere. It doesn’t seem like an easy road to success. Even if you are lucky enough to get published, there is still marketing and promotional work to be done and even that doesn’t ensure that your story will make it to the big time. Yup, pretty easy to understand why people give up. Let’s dwell on the negative for just a little longer before we put it behind us. If I’m any example of the typical writer at all, there are many other things […]
Read moreCategory: Irreverent Muse
Baby Steps
The idea of trying something new is often daunting, whether it is writing a story or trying yoga for the first time. I know when I’m faced with something new I often ask myself if I think I can do it. Will I enjoy it? Is it really worth making a fool of myself. Despite all the self-doubt and apprehension, I usually go through with it and check off another thing done in the life experiences list. If I enjoy myself, I might even do it again. The thing about that is, because the activity is unknown, my mind begins to build it up to something potentially scary. I don’t really know what to expect so I start to expect […]
Read moreDon’t Let the Proof Put You in the Pudding
I had a hard lesson re-enforced this week and the re-enforcement made me feel like a bit of a clod. Let me begin with a story. It is a story of hard work and commitment and ultimately, stupid mistakes. As you probably know, I have a podcast titled “Get Published”. When I first conceived the podcast I was only going to do an episode a month. That lasted until I put out a general call asking for interview subjects. The response was positive, VERY POSITIVE, and made me realize that I needed to increase the release schedule if I didn’t want to keep people waiting for months to hear their interview. So I started releasing the podcast every two weeks. […]
Read moreWhy Bother with Twitter?
I have been involved in several conversations lately where the topic of Twitter comes up. Sometimes I tell someone I’m on Twitter and sometimes that person asks me if I’ve heard of it. In both cases, the person I’m talking with sometimes says something like “I don’t bother with Twitter because it’s just for sharing inane information” (i.e. what the tweeter had for breakfast, tracking naps, having bowel movements, etc.). I always find these conversations to be an uphill battle because I have to first convince the party at hand that while there is something to what they are saying, that isn’t the end of it all. Note that I didn’t say those sorts of tweets don’t happen. In point […]
Read more