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In particular I have to say in the interview online I liked his note about having his “Razor’s Edge” moment since that is one of my favorite books. It is a wonderful read and Somerset Maugham is fantastic writer.  And Dennis is also a mystery novelist. His book, “From Crime to Crime: Mindboggling Tales of Mystery and Murder” is out now!

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James Hollis said, “Fear of our own depths is the enemy.” And William Styron (one of my favorite authors) said, “     “The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone’s neurosis.”

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Thought she did a phenomenal job of inspiring and elevating the conversation – plus she brought Gary up and had him talk about the importance of “love and heart” in everything you do.

Having spent a decade as a technology journalist before my current incarnation I can tell you that Kathy’s story is always inspiring and her take on all things “breakthrough” are not only actionable but lively.

The key for all of us is to do what we love and keep our congruent brand (ourselves) in that same zone with like-minded folks and people who uplift us on a daily basis.

I also had the great pleasure of sitting behind one of my own personal heroes, Hugh Mcleod , whose new book, “Ignore Everybody” is coming out in June. Go and buy it!  

Now for Kathy’s takeaways:

1. “It’s not in the corner because you don’t use it, you don’t use it because it’s in the corner.”

2. “Think clueless.”

3. “Don’t make a better X, make a better use of X.”

4. Always ask, “What is the bigger experience?”

5. “What movie are your users (or audience) in and what movie do they really need to be in?”

6. Don’t have death by risk aversion.

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“Everyone wants to feel as though their lives have meaning, espescially creative people – it’s like water to them.”

Make your life meaningful, your blog posts meaningful, your facebook missives and Twitter dalliances meaningful and everything else will follow.

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She has some good insight in terms of blogging and why to blog. She also highlights Seth Godin’s blog as a blog that works, but I would say his blog works for marketing Seth (and I think Seth is great) but it is not a two-way conversation because Seth doesn’t allow commenting on his blog.

And no one has to enable comments on their blog by the way, but if you’re a book author or a fiction book author, one of the ways to engage folks is to leave your comments on. Also comment on other blogs and get the blog convo happening both ways.

Look at David Meerman Scott’s blog for a good example of convo both ways.  Or Toby Bloomberg’s blog. For literary agents look at Nathan Bransford’s blog. Look at how Liz Strauss does her amazing Open Mike nights on her blog. Read B.L. Ochman’s blog. Read Jennifer Robenalt’s blog.

Or my own personal favorite blogger Steve Kayser. 

Whatever you do online, always make it balanced with offline even if you make your living online. You don’t need to make it 24/7.

At the end of M.J.’s article, is basically a couple of paragraphs about bloggers who’ve died in the past couple years of heart attacks, which seems to beg the question, “Can blogging kill you?”

Guess what??? It doesn’t!

Stress kills us. Smoking kills us. Not spending enough time being crazy or having fun can slowly kill us. Greed and “not enough itis” can kill us. But blogging? I don’t think it can kill you.

But just in case here are some pointers to ensure you’re a healthy blogger!

1. Don’t spend 24/7 blogging, twittering, facebooking, or on any other online shenanigans.

2. Don’t believe that to be viable or visible online you have to incessantly be communicating.

3. Don’t be a blogging-downer. Don’t post a ton of negative things on your blog or website to build yourself up.

4. Step away from the blog and go outside once in awhile.

5. Don’t engage in flame wars.

6. Reach out to like-minded folks and revel in their spirit, blog posts and take on business, life, work etc.

7. Make peace with your inbox always being a bit too full.

8. Twittering during a movie date with your husband is not kosher.

9. Be mindful that juggling too many blogs makes Jack or Jill a dull boy or girl in real life.

10. One blog at a time, one post at a time, one reader at a time and always focus on expanding your ideas and your reader’s ideas.

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Resolve to do an e-newsletter this year. It will be a great benefit to you and your prospective customers.

Here are three e-newsletter companies you can use to push your news out:

MadMimi.com

ConstantContact.com

MyEmma.com

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Today is Blog Action Day and the topic for this year is Poverty. Probably plenty of folks will post on the current economic crisis and politics in terms of poverty and I hope they do.

I wanted to post about what I see as the poverty of the soul that is increasingly prevalent in all our lives as we grow too busy to address our creative sides and engender creativity in the souls of our children.

Being an artist or a writer or a musician one often has to make friends with poverty in order to pursue their career full-time. More and more with the advent of the reality-based television shows where stars are made by phone polls and three ego-driven talking heads at a long table, we often forget how many people are out there just struggling to keep creating and have literally taken a vow of poverty to be able to share their soul with the world.

One might say they overcome poverty by creating in spite of it, in spite of all the naysayers and corporations who own most of the music and publishing world, there are still people willing to independently create just for the sake of doing so. Thank heavens they exist.

Our country has lost its footing when it comes to feeding the creative spirit. We don’t spend enough time just “being”, instead we push our children and ourselves always to “doing more” and more never seems enough.

In the public relations business you might be surprised to find that we have a short shelf life as well because no matter what we achieve for clients, it never seems quite enough and there is always room to become even more famous.

Poverty of the soul is bred as well with poverty that keeps us hungry for enough food, or in need of a new coat. How does a child who does not even have the most basic of items begin to listen to his soul’s calling?

In our family we’ve committed to the book, “The Year of Not Buying” by Judith Levine for the year. It’s indescribable both the sense of exhiliration and the sense of panic that one finds when they commit to “not buying.” For my husband and I, it’s been a great revelation of how utterly addicted we’d become to being good consumers instead of grateful humans.

It’s telling and sad that the Pastor Rick Warren asked both candidates how they defined someone who was wealthy and none of them including Warren defined it as anything other than a dollar amount. That is truly poverty of the soul when the only way to describe wealth is through a dollar amount. What if wealthy means living your soul’s purpose, caring for one another and doing that without living only for the bottom line and the next purchase?

Perhaps this ongoing financial depression will clear the plate for all of us instead of just the few who have struggled with so much less for all these years. Perhaps we can all create a way out of both poverty of the soul and poverty that so many suffer in terms of having their basic human needs like food, water and shelter met on a daily basis.

I hope so.

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If you’ve not ever read the book, you should!

Letter 1 “…ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write?”
Letter 2 “Irony: Don’t let yourself be controlled by it, especially during uncreative moments.”
Letter 3 “I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!”
Letter 4 “…try to love the questions themselves… books written in a very foreign language.”
Letter 5 “…there is much beauty here, because everywhere there is much beauty.”
Letter 6 “…there is only one solitude, and it is vast, heavy, difficult to bear…”
Letter 7 “…that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.”
Letter 8 “…ask yourself whether these large sadnesses haven’t rather gone right through you…”
Letter 9 “…that you may find in yourself enough patience to endure and enough simplicity to have faith…”
Letter 10 “Art too is just a way of living…”

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