“You should first follow the plow if you want to dance the harvest jig.”
― Ken Follett, World Without End

I’m reading “Fall of Giants” by Ken Follett. 802 pages long, the first in his trilogy about the 20th century. Since he is 62, I suspect this trilogy will take years of research and writing, and may be his swan song after a long, successful career that began with “Eye of the Needle” when he was 27. Prior to this, he had already published five books before striking the mother lode. He is one of those dedicated, working writers who can now choose to write the books that he wants to.

After reading about him, I ask myself, What if I had stayed on the writing path that I started on when I was 12? Would I now be a recognized author? Maybe, but I would have spent my life doing something that I loved. While I also loved my advertising career, the difference is that I worked for others to promote other people’s products rather than my own.

When I was 12, and reluctantly living in Mexico (after being informed that we were not going home to England), I sat down at my mother’s Remington and typed my first book, “The Glass Stag.” 240 pages, double-spaced. Then I revised and rewrote it three times. My next book came at 13 (considered and rejected by MacMillan as excellent but no audience for a book written by a teenager). At 14, I joined an adult read and critique group, where I wrote my third book.

I knew for certain that I would become a writer.

Then why did I stray from that path?

Young love, having fun, moving, a career, New York and London took over my life. Until I was 21 and in a dull marketing job where I wrote lots of poetry. One day, I looked out of the filthy office window and thought, Is this how I want to spend my life? I quit, typed scripts at the BBC part-time for a living, and spent several months writing a book. This time, I was on track.

Until the day I met the love of my love who whisked me off for a year of high style living and travel before we broke up.

Back I went to a high-flying job as PR for an airline (pun intended) until marriage and a kid led me back to the corporate world and to Mexico, another marriage, another child, and then as a single mother supporting my kids.

Once, a friend from my first read and critique group, who had published several books, took the manuscript written years before in London to his top New York agent who got all excited about it. “Just clean it up and send it back,” he asked. It was a week before my second marriage, I was about to start a new job, and I had a two-year old to look after. The timing was off. I never did.

Fast forward to forced early retirement from advertising, a failed business, and the urge to create came back. In a golden four and a half months, I typed out (yes, an electric typewriter) the first draft of my opus, “Recognition.” As I rewrote 2nd and 3rd drafts, I supported myself with part-time work teaching English and selling my belongings. The agent from before, one of New York’s best, agreed to read it twice, both times sending me encouraging rejection letters. Over the following years, I wrote another seven drafts, joined several writing groups, and often followed up on comments made by agents in the numerous rejection letters. My first chapter won an award. But after seven years with “Recognition,” I wasn’t getting anywhere. So I stuck it in the closet.

I wrote another first draft of a novel, and a personal memoir (five drafts) that everyone, except for me, in three writing groups praised and loved. I was a weekly newspaper columnist and had shorter pieces published.

Next, inspired by Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed”, I took a Writers Digest book proposal course. When I approached several agents, they all wanted to see the book. For several years, while working freelance as a Hispanic report writer, I wrote “Don’t Hang Up!” Initial response from agents: great book, excellent writing, current and relevant theme, “but you need credentials for a publisher to be interested in it.”
An impasse of sorts until online opportunities unfolded before me.

Another writers’ conference and I knew where I was going: Found a small publisher willing to publish my book if I’d promote it. Put up my website, contacted a publicist, ready to go, and …

Hit by the economic downturn that depleted my resources, left me jobless again. And book less.

However, I still had a blog so I decided to make a go of that. Try to create interest in “Don’t Hang Up!” and then publish it.
I became addicted to blogging, not so much writing posts as to reading other people’s blogs and commenting on them. Many blogs inspired me or filled me with such enthusiasm that comments flowed, and I’d spend the better part of a week happily blogging.

I realized I’d lost my focus.
I wasn’t looking for or doing much work.
I got hustling and found freelance work. A lot.
That issue solved.

The other, my writing has been on hold. Meanwhile, several friends have published their books. Where am I with mine? What have I done to get it published? Too busy blogging.

Do I want to be a blogger or a book writer?

I already asked this question in a blog post months before, “Out to Sea. To Blog or Not to Blog.”

The answer is right in front of me.

I’ll never have the time or experience to aspire to reach Ken Follett’s level.
However, I do have two finished and edited memoirs, one first draft, and the outline for a trilogy that starts with “Recognition” (needs another go round/editing).

For me, at 68, time is at a premium.

So I’d better get going – and fast – with my writing.
And I can’t let life and work get in the way again.

Photo credit: Jacob Tron

“Do not wait for your ship to come in – swim out to it.” Author Unknown

(Written late 2010)
I’m not writing much anymore. Not personal stuff or my book. Spend too much time online reading other people’s blogs or in coffee houses reading books.
Seem to have lost my zeal, my energy to write, and to rebound, and rekindle that dwindling flame.

Or perhaps I haven’t lost it.
It’s still there, waiting to be relit.
And this is just a result of the last few months of frustration and worry.
No money. No work. Nothing good happening. No hope of anything much. How do I pay my rent?

That was how I felt until I received a surprising email.
Someone I barely knew – a woman I met at Toastmasters and hadn’t seen in four years when I bumped into her a few months ago at Trader Joe’s – offered me a temporary home, her town house, until she can sell it.
Could be for three-six or even more months.
Rent free. Half my bills taken care of.

So I moved there after six years living in what I had come to call fondly, My Dump.
It was tough to move out of my neighborhood where I’d lived for ten years – probably for good. It’s near downtown San Diego, and I could walk there or to the Bay, to Balboa Park, uptown, and to the stores and movies. I had everything nearby.

The day after I moved, I got work – from November 1st through the 30th, non-stop except for a half-day off on Thanksgiving. Over another hurdle.

Two ways to look at it.
I’m living in a nice place. Temporarily. Have enough money to last me another three months. I have a great website and a blog that I haven’t added to in two months while I flood my mind with top bloggers’ advice, hints, tips, and information on how to blog. And how to turn my blog into a vehicle to sell my book, “Don’t Hang Up!” when it’s published – though God only knows how as I don’t have a sou.
My spirits are up. I’ll be getting more work. Not as much as before but enough to tide me over – if I stay here.

The other side is that I’m (technically) homeless as this temporary arrangement could end in a month or so. And I have no regular means of income.
I’m 67, and finding work at this age, and the energy, isn’t easy especially in a slow economy. I have debts. Specifically, an almost unpayable one that my son left on one of my credit cards.

You could say I’m in a rut.
So I tell myself, practice what you preach, and I preach “Don’t Hang Up!” or “Don’t Give Up!”
What is a rut except a hole that you have to get out of?

So how do I get out of my rut?
First, I can’t get stuck in it – that means I can’t let negative thoughts play their mind games with me, or hold me down.
I have a set of skills that took me to the top professionally, and helped me overcome obstacles time after time. I’ve had to make new starts in the past, like the one in 2000, which I wrote a book about.
And a lot of people believe in me, have encouraged and motivated me.
Don’t I owe it to myself and to them to get myself back on my feet again?
But…most important of all, I HAVE NO CHOICE.
It’s either sink further into my rut until it becomes a deep hole or climb out of it while I still can, and get going on making another new start.

I CHALLENGE MYSELF TO DO THIS.

And I’m asking all of you to challenge me to go with this challenge, see where it takes me. See if, at 67, I can still do it. Make making it again one of the proudest achievements in my life.
Because if I do it, that will also show others in the same/similar position that they can as well.

Will you help challenge me to challenge myself?

“We must accept life for what it actually is – a challenge to our quality without which we should never know of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature.”
Robert Louis Stevenson

Photo credits:quienquieraque

“My dreams are worthless, my plans are dust, my goals are impossible. All are of no value unless they are followed by action. I will act now.” Og Mandino “The Greatest Salesman in the World”

A couple of years ago, a writer friend started a blog. Her sharp, concise, informative posts received a lot of comments – or so it seemed – 38-40 on average. Much to my surprise, after about four months, she stopped. What happened? She told me, “I’m writing a book, but when I was blogging, I spent so much time reading and commenting on other people’s blogs, that I didn’t have time for my own writing. And that’s more important to me.”

In a recent blog post, “Kick your blog up a notch, Come to Blog World,”Gutsy Writer included the following statistics:
Over 12 million American adults currently maintain a blog.
* Over 120 thousand blogs are created every day.
* There are over 1.4 million new blog posts every day.
* Blog readers average 23 hours online each week.
That’s a lot of blogs, a lot of readers, a lot of posts, and a lot of hours spent writing, reading and leaving comments. No wonder 50% of all blogs go dead within 6 months (like my friend’s).

Many bloggers, including myself, start off thinking blogging will be easy or like writing a journal – and for some it is. Most of us expect that good writing, interesting topics, important keywords and social media such as Facebook and Twitter will appeal to readers and it’s only a matter of time before we find a wider audience. Instead, we discover we’re writing for friends and family and after a while, even they lose interest.

My blog was originally intended to support my soon-to-be-published book, “Don’t Hang Up!” and is attached to my website. When my publication plans – and my economy and personal life fell apart – I decided to carry on with it. I joined a LinkedIn blogging discussion forum, a fascinating experience that led me to such an interesting variety of blogs that I subscribed to as many as I could. The blogging world had me hooked.

Some newbie bloggers, like me, in search of a wider audience, find ourselves caught up in the blogging world. To our surprise, it is fascinating and enthralling to the point where trying to find ways into it becomes the focal point of our lives.
At first, it was like taking an intensive course in blogging, learning about blogging from the pros, about content, traffic, message, communication, etc. Only after six months of this have I realized that I still have a lot more to learn, which will require much more involvement before I can even aspire to improve my disappointing Google stats.
And frankly, it’s becoming boring, often repetitive – though I have discovered some pearls of wisdom and outstanding bloggers and posts that I file under Advice or Best Blogs Ever, as well as some delightful and informative personal blogs.

However, in this time, I have not written a word – not a single word – of my book. I haven’t even made corrections or done any editing.

So I face an important decision.
What is my goal in life? To be a book author or a really good blogger with a big following?
What is my job profile? It says book author/freelance writer/Hispanic research writer/analyst. Nowhere does it say Blogger.

Have I gone off track or just wandered into another world?
Or has my focus changed?
If I want to be a great Blogger, I should have something to sell – a product, a service, an idea. So far, I have nothing.

My life’s dream, ever since I was 12 and wrote my first full-length book (240 typewritten pages, double spaced) has been to become a published author.

It appears that I’m ambushing my dream in the rather elusive quest of becoming that one in a million bloggers to get a reasonable following.

What am I to do?
Stay out at sea, sailing around in the blogosphere like a lost ship?
Or go back to my own writing, get my books in shape, and try to find an agent/publisher or to self-publish.

Sounds like a no-brainer.

This would not mean that I’d stop blogging completely. Just slow down, and instead of reading and leaving comments on 20-30 blogs a week, I’ll pull back to about 10.

So what do you think?
I’d love to hear from you so as to erase any doubts as to which road to take.

Photo credits: Veronica Valades