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I particularly like this quote from Keillor’s speech, “What does it take to be a writer of humor? It takes a difficult childhood. If you had a happy childhood, you should go into orthodontics or the priesthood.”

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Roy C. Clarke’s superb take on narrative form.

And the history of Writer’s Digest and why you should be reading it.

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For three months add all those newsletters, ezines, YOUR NEXT BIG Chance in Publishing Teleseminar offerings to your junk mail list. Let me be clear, I’m not targeting any particular teleseminar, I’m just telling you – urging you – pleading with you to get off the tele-merry-go-round. There is nothing they can tell you that you won’t be able to find out once your book is written. If your book is written – there is nothing they can tell you about how to start pitching it to agents.

If your book is published, you can spend two really fruitful hours on the Web by finding a book that is most like your book and doing Google searches for every place that book is featured. Voila – you’ve just built your first media target list, so you don’t need that teleseminar to tell you how to build your outreach list. Ah, another hour saved for you to spend pitching your book instead of listening to the “masters”.

STOP THE TELESEMINAR MADNESS.

In the summer my family puts our TV in storage for one month in the garage. You cannot imagine the time we have to ponder our navels, a great literary work, or just spending that time with the sheer joy of hearing one another breathe.

I’m urging you for this New Year to stop scurrying around from teleseminar to teleseminar and spend some time just pondering your work, your creativity and how you’re going to successfully blaze your own publishing trail.

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Honestly this article alone should be printed and excerpted and passed around to anyone who is responsible for generating sales copy. Fantastic.

And leave it to Bly to find a superb ending quote from copywriter Milt Pierce,”A good swipe file is better than a college education.”

If you don’t know what a swipe file is, find out and start building one. Here’s a good article on swipe files beyond what Bly has in his article.

In PR you can do the same thing with really stunning press releases. Read them, collect them and glean eye-catching nutgraphs from them that you can then apply to your own releases.

A nutgraph by the way is a journalist’s term for the core paragraph of any story. If you don’t know the nutgraph of what you’re pitching – how the heck will the journalist possibly understand it?

Now go and swipe!

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So for all you writers out there I wanted to put this link to an article I wrote for Nick Usborne’s publication titled, “Be Shamelessly Persistent and Unyielding in Your Pursuit to Be A Freelancer.” I hope you get some encouragement from it!

And write and tell me how you’re being shamelessly persistent!

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In terms of what they think is too “advertising” and not it’s a bit of a toss up. For instance they have a comment on this one for Al Ries and I think Al Ries is brilliant and this entry about him does not at all sound like “advertising.” It is just really what the guy has accomplished over all these years!

Here’s one Wikipedia likes (and so do I) on Tim Berners-Lee (please tell me you all know who he is) if not, read the entry.

The key in Wikipedia is to write the entry like an article. That’s what it’s all about. An objective journal focused article. I like that!

And would you believe Ronald McDonald has a Wikipedia entry with audio as well?

Here’s my favorite entry – not only because I’m related to him on the Clemens side, but more importantly because he is one of the finest writers that ever lived.

Now go and write. Or email me if you do a draft and want some help on how to make it sound less formal/bio and more article-esque. (No, I’m not pitching myself as the new Wikipedia Copy Guru – just want you to get to work on it and it’s always good to have a second set of eyes.)

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As a writer, I deal with a bit of insomnia and I’m sure that most of you who are creatives deal with this as well.

My mom’s cure for insomnia was always a warm glass of milk and Windexing the windows, but in the modern day of the Internet revolution, the cure for me is to just get up and write and work.

Einstein said, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”

Sometimes in twilight after this Texas heat all day, one can experience the mysterious by putting on some good music or even a Buddhist chant CD depending on the mood, and just sit at the keyboard and write.

I encourage you to take advantage of the twilight hour and contemplate how Edison, Einstein and one of my own personal heroes Richard Feynman solved the mysterious in twilight hours.

If you’re up but you’re stuck in what you perceive is a “writing block” then put out Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” or Garcia-Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and start typing the text from the pages. Nothing will kick-start you like typing in the work of the masters.

Every summer I copy in longhand a classic book just to keep my creativity flowing, so don’t be daunted.

Write, imagine, and leave sleep for mere mortals.

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Here is a link to the post.

I’ve interviewed him over the years and just always come away with the understanding that he is dedicated to all of us being empowered communicators!

Here’s a link to the first interview I did with Steve years ago – and what’s interesting is how “right on” Rubel was in terms of his predictions!

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I realized it’s too hard to summarize, so this week I brought them a printed out copy of this article that Michael Masterson penned last year in regard to me and networking. I’ve got to say that this article actually was the one that actually helped one of my parents and one of my in-laws finally understand what i’ve been doing all these years of "interviewing CEOs in my pajamas, in my office." :>) And what a great and humbling honor to be written up by someone I so highly respect.

So I’m putting a link to "How to Get Willie Nelson in Your Rolodex"  here and if you want to read it – caution…it’s all about me, but it might provide some good nuggets about networking, persistence and maintaining your vision.

The other thing I can say is that for me the key has always been no matter what, to be authentic in how I network and reach out to folks.

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So I thought it might be a good idea to talk a little bit about my writing career and when I decided I was a real writer. The thing is, I force myself to call myself a real writer every day that I wake up because if I don’t, then what the heck am I doing writing?

As far back as elementary school I was already telling my teachers and anyone else who would listen that I was a writer and going to be famous. I kept saying this throughout my life in school and when I finally got to the amazing Goddard College, I realized I was in a giant group of people who had done the same thing all their lives. Amazing.

The thing about writing that drives most of us, is that we can’t not do it. So we are writers! Roy Blount Jr. once wrote in a letter to me, what E.B. White had written to him years before, “If you can’t but not write, then you’re a writer.”

So I’ve been a writer all my life. It isn’t if your stories ever hit the big time, if you ever write for leading pubs, if you’re in magazines because at the end of the day – it’s not for me about the readers – and how many may or may have not read my stories – it’s about the WRITING!

I can’t but not write.

I’m the only Mom I know who still pens handwritten thank you notes and you’d be surprised how many business writing gigs that same effort has brought me. I’m the only one who wants to rewrite the menus so they’re snappier and who handwrites “As I Lay Dying” by Faulkner each summer in a spiral notebook while still trying to figure out his skill. (southern!!)

So each pencil to paper, every digit to keyboard and each sigh met with the blank screen makes you a writer. A writer continues despite the disappointment, the unbearable ache of another writing block, a too quick critic or an editor who only looks for commas and not the real “content”. What makes you a writer in Blount Jr.’s words (summarizing E.B. White’s note) is “when you can’t but not write.”

And as Liz said in her wonderful post “How do I know I’m a writer? Try as might avoid it, I simply must write.”

Now go and write! And blogging counts too, and thank you notes count too, and essays count too, and journaling counts too!!!!

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