The 2014 Art of Marketing conference in Vancouver featured incredible speakers and big-name sponsors, each presenter offering a unique perspective on the current and future state of marketing—knowledge as essential to the author as it is to the startup tech company.
Read my guest post at Jane Friedman’s blog for my big conference takeaways, including how to find your audience, earn trust, live generously, and generally make your network blow up like a marshmallow in a microwave.
I have an obsessive personality. I get hooked on something and it’s all I can think about. Naturally, when I have an idea for a novel (one I’m convinced is spectacular), nothing gets between me and my keyboard. I make sacrifices—socializing, mainly—in order to spend time writing. Part of me even becomes my protagonist: I want to think like him so I can successfully write him.
Writing a book obviously requires a ridiculous amount of dedication. Less obvious, however, is why some people can accomplish it and some can’t. What traits set us apart? Are some of us predisposed to be novelists?
I have to share this. It’s one of the first poems I ever wrote. The positive reaction from the class and teacher was a huge factor in inspiring me to keep writing. Moral of the story: praise a kid’s work, because that encouragement makes a big impact!
When I make my snowman
With a carrot for his nose
Along comes my pony
Munch munch! Off she goes!
When I make my snowman
With peanuts for his toes
Along comes a squirrel
Munch munch! Off he goes!
When I make my snowman
With no nose or toes
Along comes my puppy
Now he has yellow clothes.
To match the human to the face that has Picasso drawn
To find among the autumn leaves the still and silent fawn
On such a day I know the truth whether the path is set
Be the ground fresh laid in stone or be its clay still wet
Does great Hecate see me there in grass that seems more lush?
Or should the daisies at my feet subdue my need to rush?
Is it a house that I’ve begun to build with this brick wall?
Or is it meant to crumble here ’til brick by brick, it falls?
Beyond the bricks perhaps there lies an Earth of paradise
But since its snow is free of prints it may be mere thin ice
I can’t but tell unless I try to build my house from snow
If it shall melt I still at least have all those bricks to show
And so I carve said house of snow but build the bricks up still
In hopes someday that igloo holds, and move to it, I will
For I cannot but know for sure the nature of my path
The trades of safety, fun or growth, responsible or rash
I will not be the fawn so still on clear untrodden land
But rather be Picasso’s work, and paint my Earth by hand