When I started this blog, my plan was to post articles until I’d written enough to lump them into an ebook and retire on the royalties. Or maybe buy a candy bar, but at least I’d be a published author! Then, when I did retire, the book would give me the credibility I’d need to start a brilliant writing career. You see, I wanna be a writer when I grow up. No! Make that read, ‘I WILL be a writer when I grow up.’ Yeah, that’s better. Writers have to be optimistic
Then I learned that articles you’ve published on your blog are not eligible for submittal to many (many!) writing contests. Since winning writing contests would also give me credibility (along with a few bucks), I decided I’d write new articles, enter them, and then put them on the blog after they’d won. (Of course they’d win – be optimistic!) So now I’m going to write shorter posts for this blog – more like ‘background color’ for my soon-to-be-prolific career. Then you, my loyal readers, will be able to tell everyone, “Oh sure, I’ve been reading her blog since she started.’ You’ll be part of the in crowd!
Actually, ‘background color’ is going to be my biggest problem as a renowned writer (she said optimistically), since I try to keep a low profile in life. I grew up in one of those small Midwestern communities where everybody knew everything about everybody and their whole families – including third cousins twice removed who didn’t live within a thousand miles of the place. My brother once said that Mom wasn’t ‘tuned in’ to the local grapevine; she was on its Board of Directors. Once, in about 4th grade, I came home from school to find myself in trouble for stomping through puddles while wearing my good school shoes. Mom had not seen me commit this infraction; a classmate’s mom had, and she’d called my mom. How come adults don’t get in trouble for tattling?
I never liked the everybody-knows-everything policy, and nowadays I work at staying under life’s radar. Becoming widely published will bring my visibility back up, and I’m not looking forward to that part. Fame and fortune are fine for some people, but I’ll stick to just fortune. Lots of fortune, please.
A pseudonym will help, but there will still be book signings and TV appearances and photo shoots and walking the red carpet at the premieres of movies made from my books, and here we are back at that optimism thing again, aren’t we? Well, watch this space for additional bouts of hopeful confidence, and keep your fingers crossed that they’ll turn out to be justified.