So I thought I would take a minute to just shout out to some fairly cool people who have things going on in their lives, too.

Megan Kerr’s The Writer’s Greenhouse Kickstarter

Megan is cool. I know her through Linkedin, and she’s been full of suggestions and generous with materials and advice to help me understand what it would take to teach a creative writing class or start a writer’s group, etc. Well above and beyond the five minutes you can reasonably expect from someone on the internet. Which makes her an example of the, maybe, four connections I’ve ever made during my three years on Linkedin that are worth mentioning, of which there are two in this one post.

So what am I plugging? Well, I already counted down once, but you probably missed it, so. . . 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . .1 . . .

This!

Megan describes it as:

A book of games and activities for creative writing programmes and writers’ groups: fun, creative process-learning around key elements of story architecture. These are never formulaic or dot-to-dot! They help writers learn new principles, try fresh approaches, and collaborate. So many universities and colleges now teach writing courses and so many writers have writing groups – but there are no group-based resources! That’s what I want to change.

She’s actually getting pretty close to her fundraising goal, so if this sounds like something you want to see happen, get on over there and check it out!

Candy’s Monsters (by Candy Korman)

Candy continues to be nice to me, even though I have yet to review her third novella, POED. I did review The Mary Shelley Game and Bram Stoker’s Summer Sublet, and I promised to review POED. I have actually read most of it, so here’s a mini-review: It seems pretty good.

Anyway, get over to her site and buy some books and stuff. 

Work is kicking into overdrive. The nature of the freelance writing beast is that we find ourselves waiting, waiting, waiting. . . then expected to produce, instantly. That’s fine. In fact, I think it might be necessary. Drive is not some trait, inborn, nor is it something learned. It is, instead, a state of being, just like hunger, cold, anger, and fear. What warms us, feeds us, calms us, and encourages us, however, is as unique as our fingerprints–and it’s a damned good thing when you think about it, because the world needs all types. We don’t all want to be writers, and if we did, no one would need me! Getting to know just what rings your bell is an important first step.

1. Identify What Drives You

This is as straightforward as the old adage: Above all else, Know thyself.  Getting to know yourself is no easy task though. Unfortunately, we spend our lives, especially the early parts, in a state of constant change. There’s a reason so many of us find ourselves switching careers in our mid-twenties. It took my nearly a quarter of a century, but I eventually figured out I don’t do well for extended periods of time in the same job, the same places, or the same relationships. The world is full of people who are much better at their job than I would ever be, because I am a creature of bursts and tides. I would out perform most people in most jobs for awhile, and then slowly fall behind; that’s not hypothetical, that’s the way I am. I believe in doing a good job, but my natural state is near-obsessive interest in a subject which eventually falls away. That’s me, though. Doesn’t mean that’s you. Who are you? The hardest part of finding any answer is finding the right question. These quasi-guidance counselor questions might help you figure that out:

1. The “Lottery Question”: What would you do if you had all the money you needed for the rest of your life in the bank?
2. The “Ascetic Question”: What do I need to be, i.e. what would I be unable to be happy without?
3. The “Ghost Question”: What would I want to hear people say about me at my funeral? Who would I want to see there?

Don’t breeze over these questions, really, truly put some thought into them. Each one of them serves its purpose. The first question will help you understand what things you might want to do with your life, the second will tell you what you are and are not willing to sacrifice to get there, and the third will help you see what sort of person you should try to be along the way. There’s no reason to have just one answer to each. In fact, if you can’t make a list of at least ten items to answer each, you probably need to spend more time thinking about your answers. Once you’ve done that, it’s time to look long and hard at taking this conceptual BS and turning it into action.

Well, I met a cat, and a cat’s owner, and oh boy does the internet ever love this feline.

I posted it over on my personal site, which is brand new and had very little traffic otherwise, so I could count on the traffic from other sources being statistically insignificant. I have a few takeaways that should be helpful to anyone with their own site:

• Preparations for Making the Most of Virality
• Types of Links and How Well They Work
• Which Content Aggregators Really Deliver and How

Take all of this with a grain of salt, as my experience may differ from yours, but, at the very least, you’ll have someone else to balance your own experiences against.

Related articles

• What makes a second book successful?
• Bad Days?
• 11 Writing Masters Who Gave Me The Courage To Create

This would not have been possible without the help of friends. Friends who will be remembered when I take over the world.

Welcome to the first post of the revamped Cities of the Mind business site, and the 500th blog post! 

If I had a dollar for every time some writer described writing as an addiction, I wouldn’t be a writer. Because I’d be retired. I think it’s a fair comparison, mind you, but I would respectfully suggest that we’re less like the users, and more like the pushers.

I am not suggesting writing is just like drug dealing. I mean, sure, both can get you killed or imprisoned in many parts of the world, but it’s much more socially acceptable for drug dealers to kill clients who don’t pay their bills.