WRITING SUCCESS, WITH BENEFITS

How to measure writing success?

The same way any success is measured, if you take out the money part.

You get paid in ‘exposure’ which is shared traffic with the company you write for.

More exposure, more interest; more interest, more demand; more demand, more exposure.

Take exposure, along with $6.95, and you can order a venti mocha at Starbucks.

Follow me for more success stories, or scroll down.

Setting:

Writers need a setting, a place, and sometimes it turns into an important part of the story, like an additional character.

Setting is one of the main elements of story telling when it’s Man vs Nature.

Moby Dick seems like that story, with the whale and the ocean.

Jack London wrote about nature in every story, like To Build A Fire.

Keep looking and you’ll find Man v Man, Man v Society, Man v Death, and every mix of them all.

Eventually you settle into the groove of Man v Himself, and then everything else.

If you read enough, you’ll have writing success, because isn’t that what all avid readers want?

Or is reading others’ material good enough?

If you never write, you’ll never know.

 

A Portland Setting

I moved into this building full of characters in 1980.

Apt. #302. It was $155 a month.

Three floors, mail in front, laundry in the back.

It was home for men and women at different stages of life, ages twenty to over seventy.

I’m seventy now and still look at the neighborhood with glee.

During a recent visit I met the seventy year old guy living in the townhouse where the parking lot used to be, and he’s loving it for $4000.00 a month rent.

 

Back then I was a gleeful twenty-six year old who’d already missed out on two happy futures.

The first was with a woman who knew who she was and what she wanted to do.

She needed someone who knew themselves and what they wanted to do.

Apparently I wanted to move across the whole country to break-up, lug all my crap to NYC before lugging it all to Portland and my second miss at a happy future.

That time was with a wonderful woman who knew what she needed in her man.

Turns out they both needed more and I was supposed to know ‘more of what?’

My Portland Setting was an ideal place for learning ‘more of what?’

While I lived there I learned how to be the ‘older man,’ the ‘younger man,’ and the ‘rebound boyfriend.’

Then I turned twenty-seven. Time was flying by and so was I.

Things slowed down after I met someone who didn’t need anything from anyone satisfied with just hanging around.

So I hung around.

 

Get To Know Me

Much like the nearly 4000 blog posts I’ve written here, I have a compulsive itch I scratch now and then.

Call it a ‘writers’ itch’ where everything can be an inspiration if you let it.

But first you need to let it out.

Breaking-up is an inspiration?

Man vs Marriage, Kramer vs Kramer, etc.

Falling in love is an inspiration?

Man vs Feelings, The Way We Were.

 

We got through the first date, met each other’s family, got engaged, set a date, all good to go.

For the final test of our love and devotion I broke up with her.

If I broke up with her and won her back we’d have a stronger marriage?

Reality vs Delusion.

Without missing a beat, or blinking an eye, she said she understood and laid out her plans for the future, extensive plans, detailed plans, and none of it included me.

We’d talked about the things we might do when we were a married couple; she was still going to do them, just with someone else and I already didn’t like them.

In my mind I imagine her opening a World Atlas and showing where she would live as a single woman.

She was moving to England? Her things were already packed. The driver is honking the horn for her to finish up?

If I was going to win her back I had to start sooner than I’d planned, like right then.

 

For The Win

PS: Don’t include a planned break-up as a catalyst for relationship success. It just confuses things, like a mistaken identity.

 

PSS: Mistaken identity is the key to writing success with benefits. No one can mistake you for anything else as long as you keep writing. What’s your excuse?

 

Whatever the excuse used to not write, or not do anything, until the time is right, until you feel it, until you can’t avoid it, it’s a good excuse.

It matches up with, ‘If You Think You Can, Or Think You Can’t Do Something, You’re Right.’

If you’re looking around for more than you’re getting, you’re seeing the same thing as everyone else: Not enough.

Try looking at what you have and do something with it.

Love the one you’re with.

Honor their wishes.

Obey your feelings, or at least acknowledge them. Just don’t start writing a blog, I don’t need the competition.

But, if you can’t resist, leave a comment and I’ll talk you out of it.

Or, into it. (Not naming names.)