Moving the Ball

Last week, I wrote a post about my process of re-inventing myself that ostensibly began a few years ago, but ran afoul of life and what James Scott Bell calls “The Big Lie.”  Since I wrote the post (June 9th if anybody is keeping score at home), I have concentrated on moving the ball as much as possible on as many of the writing  projects that I’m tossing around as possible.  The day I wrote that post was the day that Jason L. Blair inspired me to actually make a plan and start making some concrete steps towards accomplishing my re-invention as a writer.  He detailed his steps in his post on his own “Operation: Awesome.”  I have been running on a crazy manic of excitement ever since.

My own version of “Operation: Awesome” involves similar steps:

1. Start thinking of myself as a writer: I thought when I ended my career a few years ago and started my first blog that I had this covered, but it didn’t take.  I was still under the influence of “The Big Lie.”  Now, I have that one behind me.  My bio here on Geekcentricity begins with my conception of myself as a writer.  I have business cards made up and have actually had occasion to hand out a few.  James Scott Bell said that the first thing he did was “buy a black coffee mug with Writer written in gold across it.”  I have always been a believer in visualization and learned from Dr. Tim Lautzenheiser that in order to accomplish something, you have to consider yourself as already having accomplished it.  In order to become something, you have to see yourself as the thing you want to become.  I restarted this step in earnest when I started Geekcentricity.  I just wasn’t exactly sure how to accomplish the next step, or even exactly what it was, until Jason helped me out.
2. Learn the craft: I have always had a natural talent with words and creating stories.  That, along with a buck seventy-nine, plus tax may buy me a cup of coffee.  I had taken some writing courses in college and was encouraged by a professor that I discovered way too late in my days as a college student, but I really found that I didn’t know shit about the meat and bones of a story.  I had been getting by, or actually not getting by, on talent.  You can only go so far with that and I recently realized that I was pretty close to my ceiling.  I knew that I couldn’t afford to take writing classes or seminars right now and I didn’t know where else to turn.  After reading Jason’s post, and how he learned how to write screenplays from Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! series, I started digging around for some books that could teach me more about the craft of writing.  I eventually wandered over to Writers’ Digest (thanks Jane Friedman) and discovered their Write Great Fiction series of books.  I clicked my way over to Amazon and discovered that they could be purchased quite affordably, so I bought them.  They arrived today.  Today is the day I launch this step of the process!  I’m so excited!
3. Writing and selling myself: I’ve already started this step, so I guess this list is out of order, but I think you have to write as you learn and learn as you write.  I also believe that you have to start selling yourself as a writer from day one.  Jason includes steps related to defining himself as a writer and doing research, but I already know what type of writer I want to be.  I also have already started researching, since I started defining some projects I wanted to work on very early in the process.  The “selling myself” step will no doubt intensify once I actually make some headway into actually getting published, or at least have hope of getting published.