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Like, what the hell, right?

Gotta have a platform.

Have to make it a priority.

Only five minutes a day!

Do it or doom yourself to obscurity (i.e., no sales)….

A PLATFORM.

Ooooh, the very word strikes fear in grown children.

“What is this ‘plat-form’ of which you speak?”, you might very well ask. Ah, go back and click the “plat-form” hyperlink. But, in a nutshell and according to the linked Christina Katz article, it’s what makes you more visible and appealing to your readership. A way to make a name for yourself, to…pun intended…stand above the crowd.

And we all know what else has one stand above a crowd, elevated platform, trap door, 8-13  turns of rope, and all?

I just finished reading a Writer’s Digest article about “50 Simple Ways To Build Your Platform In 5 Minutes A Day.” It was in the March/April 2011 issue, page 40. I have to admit, I loved the article. It gave all kinds of neat little ways to do just this, and I am going to be revisiting this article multiple times as I attempt to implement its ideas.

But, really, five minutes?

There are very few publically acceptable things one can do in five minutes, and as I reread this article, I believe this was more about pulling in readers than actually spending only five minutes a day doing some of this stuff (though the argument could be made), because, once you start doing it, you’ll end up spending way more than just five minutes. That’s the thing about promotion, once you get into these things, it’s easy to keep going, cause time flies. But, read the article…there’s a lot of great, specific, and easy to do ideas, five minutes or not.

Luckily, I don’t yet have a book deal (self-published novel notwithstanding), so I have all the time in the world to get around to these….

Which brings me to Bree Ervin, of Think Banned Thoughts. She posted about how can people like us squeeze even more out of our busy days, while still trying to work a minimum of two jobs, maintain relationships/raise families, and keep any semblance of sanity and a healthy body.

In a word:  we can’t.

At least not without sucking from other already pared down areas of our lives. The sad truth of this is that the only way to do something like this, is for some other area(s) in our lives that have already been deemed important enough to keep doing is made to suffer.

You could not wind down from your insane day in whatever way you’ve been doing so and invest in more caffeine…

You could get back in front of that PC when you get home from your day job instead of talking and interacting and being with your loved ones…

You could get one of them laptop lap desks and bring both into the bathroom when you’re on the john (but, yeah, this one gets complicated when it’s time to, you know)…

You could not go to the gym–hey, that’d free up an hour or two! Why not give up physical fitness altogether? Who needs it, if all you’re really doing all day is sitting behind computers, right?

And kids? Easy one. Let em free range! If it works for pets and cattle, it should work for children even better because they can actually make decisions. Just set out bowls of water and Cheerios…

Am I wrong?

Make it a priority.

Problem is…if we give up so much of what makes us us, something wrong happens. I know, plenty have and are doing it. Are fanatical about it. Have no time for those who can’t seem to find the same time or priorities, and publishers are getting more and more demanding about every author devoting more and more of their lives than they actually have to doing this kind of stuff.

Giving up the body.

Sure, noble. But, thing is, many of us are already giving up the body for our day jobs and what writing time we can carve out of our days. And there’s only so much body to go around.

So this is where the difficult part comes in, Bree. You’ll actually end up writing less. Yes, less, because all you can do is try, and by that I mean you’ll have to round Robin what will suffer in your already packed, everything-already-deemed-important life. When we blog, or do any of those other 50 “five-minute thingees,” we won’t get manuscript work done. That’s it. We’ll occasionally only get five hours of sleep, or see thirty minutes of our loved ones before those five hours of sleep, but that’s how it’s done. But you have to keep doing the other things that make you, you.

And, of course, making it up to family in other ways. That’s just how life works, unless you can Zen Master it by warping time (working on that one, myself…).

And…if anyone lands a full-time writing gig, they can quit their other jobs, but writing full time won’t exactly be a picnic, neither. Then you’ll have to do all those 50 things and more. AND have to work with an editor to rework your manuscript that you already thought was “finished” and get that in yesterday, and have to start and keep going on your new manuscript. And Facebook. And Twitter. And Book signings and conferences. And <fill-in-the-blank-cause-the-busy-just-keep-getting-busier-never-less-busy>. There will be no reprieve, but at least then, you’ll be doing exactly what your whole life’s struggle has been about.

Writing.

Just try not to lose yourself or your loved ones in the process.

Rick Hanson, a friend of mine who has since passed away, and was author of the Adam McCleet series (which I love!), once told me that he’d sometimes wished he’d never gotten a book deal because he was always rushing to beat deadlines and it seemed to take the fun out things. He also had a day job. Miss ya, Rick.

Hang loose, friends….

Okay, now this is probably going to be a weird post coming from me, but yesterday I was sitting in a tire shop awaiting repair of a damaged tire (working on a manuscript while I waited), when in comes a mother with her twenty-something daughter, and the daughter’s infant daughter. The twenty-something was quite talkative, as most twenty year olds can be, but then the two of them get to playing with the twenty-something’s infant daughter–which got the infant to laughing.

Yeah, and it was here that I was taken right out of what I was doing, out of my world, and began actively listening to this child’s pure and unbounded laughter as I worked on a manuscript involving death and destruction. Now, of course I’ve heard plenty of infant laughter throughout my years on Earth, but in this one instant, this one moment in time…it really hit me in hard-to-define way, like all goodness in the world had suddenly converged….

It was so pure.

So crystalline.

So untouched by any of the ills of the world.

Most likely every mother reading this is nodding knowingly and going “Oh, yeah, you got it….” And it’s not like this has never been considered by me, but sometimes even the everyday sounds we all hear take on more depth, more resonance, an indefinably weird and heightened clarity that it’s like there is zero distortion in what we’re hearing or seeing…that the particular sound or sight was created just for you. No one else. That this particular sound has a message, and you’re finally getting close to metaphysically getting it….

That’s what this laughter sounded like.

It sounded like the joy and exhilaration and playfulness of life was trying to reach out and shake me…to let me know that, yes, it is still here, the joy, exhilaration, and playfulness of life…that no matter what else is out there, no matter how bad other things can be, there is also this.

The uncorrupted, unadulterated (pardon the pun) delight of living…the thrill of breathing, the pleasure of existing…in the moment and happy and blissful and amused by just being.

I don’t know the age of the infant, don’t know at what age actual wonder sets in to the developing infant mind, and I never saw him or her…but for that one moment in the microcosm of that tire shop, the unfettered joy of that infant’s laughter caused much more than just a physical smile. I felt the playful energy in that infant’s laughter and soul pick me up and shake me silly.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s what we all need every now and then–and perhaps a little more in today’s times…to smile…a deep, soul-affecting, blissfully elated smile.

I’ve been putting off posting this, because I figure everyone must be posting it, but it’s so dang cool, I just couldn’t resist any more.  This was captured on January 28, 2011, at Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock. I haven’t done too much in the way of searches to see if there’s much clamoring over claiming “Hoax!”, but I’m not seeing that. I did find this Fox article.

It would seem to me, hoaxes obviously notwithstanding, that who or whatever is responsible for this, “they” wouldn’t be in the habit of making “mistakes,” so one would have to assume there’s significance associated with the location of this incident. It’s fascinating and I’ve personally never seen anything like this before, though, apparently, several tourists in the area claim to have seen similar in Mississippi.

I would hope that this time something more of note will come from this, instead of things just getting lost in the white noise of more news and becoming quickly forgotten, like the buzz over the UFO that flew in the background of President Obama’s inauguration (curiously the YouTube video associated with this incident was “terminated.” Interesting…).

In any event, make up your own mind, but I don’t hear anyone loudly disputing it.

First video.

Fourth video.

From the Examiner.com.

Fascinating!

Nothing and no one is perfect, me included. We’re all just trying to do the best we can with who we are and what we do. Publishing is no different. It’s easy to armchair a few opinions and chuck em out there into the world, sure, but there are some other (more positive!) thoughts I’d also love to “armchair” out there.

What I love about the institution of publishing!

Granted, I’m not quite “in” it, yet, at least not in the traditional sense (I have one self-published effort), but my agent is breaking her back trying to rectify that! For all the grief it and anything else out there gets from the masses, there are also some things publishing gets right:

It publishes books.

And here I use “books” to denote any form of book, as counterintuitive that may initially sound.

I don’t care what other diversionary contraption you’re using, there’s simply nothing like the feel, the smell, the (yes!) ambiance, the wholly metaphysical sensation of a book. You can do all-kinds-of-damage to it, and still pick it up and read it. It is the perfect medium for its content.

And I love that there are all-kinds-of-smart people out there actively looking for people like me. Actively looking to polish stuff people like me create…and present it to others to read. I love that. That’s cool. These others love words, love ideas–love truth, the imagination, and stories. Love freedom of expression.

Now, this may be hard for some to fathom, and it might be downright erroneous for others, but for me and those like me, I don’t see this as an egotistical trot. To write is to read. It’s part of the process, and the process simply is not complete until a reader gets involved. It’s like hardwired, you know? Everyone has their own superpower, I like to say. Everyone. For some it’s to act on stage or screen, raise a family, perform in the culinary arts, and for still others…the written word. As I’ve stated before that doesn’t mean just because you’re born to do something means you’ll become a popular success…it’s just that it’s your superpower, and (like we all know) not all superpowers are meant to be broadcast widely….

So…publishing.

Here are people (all kinds of smart) who will eventually find one of my efforts and fall in love with it. Some other all-kinds-of-smart will read it and condense it into their interpretation of something I created (I love to see others’ interpretations of my work; can’t right explain it, but it’s neat to see how someone else sees what I’ve done). There will be other all-kinds-of-smart pushing my work…to others who are going to take it and put it on shelves. Try to get good people from around the world to actually pay money for stuff I wrote–worlds and ideas I imagined–and which others will find just as interesting as I did to cause me to spend a certain amount of my time on Earth to write about the idea in the first place. And there will those other all-kinds-of-smart who will read and internalize what I’ve had to say enough to write concise reviews of my work–for good or ill. They will have read every word I slaved over for years in order to try to understand what I’m about.

Find out my mystery.

And there will be still other all-kinds-of-smart who will come up to me and want to talk with me about how I created this-or-that, what were my thoughts on this-or-that (or “What were you thinkin…?!), or maybe even wanna buy me a drink at a conference (I don’t drink…wine… but I can fake it pretty good!). Some will probably just stop and stare at me, head cocked to one side and hands at their sides, as if to say…really? He did this? He’s human?!

Whether or not this actually happens to me is basically moot, cause it happens to so many others, and it is all made possible by a partnership with a corporation, a company, a publishing house–heck people, let’s not forget this…to bring works created by those like me to the public. That each individual in this entire ofttimes confounding process is doing their very damnedest to do the best they can each do to deliver a product of which not only a company can make some riches, but can be proud. Yes it can be brutal, yes exhausting, but the end result is that there are all-kinds-of-smart publishing professionals  out there ready willing and able to help those of us who are writing books.

And you know?

That is what I really, really love about publishing.