How much do I suck? (Rhetorical question, thanks.)

How’s your week going?

Here’s what I’ve been reading:

Creative Thinking Techniques: The “Playful” Edition at Abundance Blog

The Great Big Internet Popularity Contest at Words on the Page

You Hate Me (Because I Failed) by Matthew Dryden

Four Diary Entries at A n n a r c h y

For No Other Reason But To Write at Oktober5

You Are the Canary in a Coalmine at Maximum Customer Experience

Success Comes from Slow Change: Leo Babauta Interview at Someday Syndrome

Last night Liz Strauss at Successful Blog asked How Do You Get People Talking on Your Blog? An interesting discussion, for sure. Check it out.

Meanwhile, please comment. Or I’ll poke you with a stick.

Err… I mean… What are you reading/writing this week? Leave your links in the comments!

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Here’s what I’m reading this week. Be sure to share your own favorite posts (ones you’ve written or ones you’ve read) in the comments!

Fun With Firing Clients at Ink Thinker Blog

How to Feel Completely Unrefreshed After the Holiday Break at Quiet Rebel Writer

A Health Blueprint for Type-A Entrepreneurs at Freelance Folder

What Grocery Stores Teach You About Free Content at Men with Pens

Twitter - Do You REALLY Care What I’m Doing at Blogging Without a Blog

What I Learned from the “Why Girl” and How It Can Help your Business at Words For Hire

Waiting for Goodbye at Words Sell

Tip of the Week: Say NO to Your Yes Men and Save Face Later! at Maximum Customer Experience

Writing Lessons from the Side of the Road at PoeWar

What I Remembered after a Rocky Day at Successful Blog

The next thank you at Levite Chronicles
 
And Alex Fayle at Someday Syndrome interviewed me about Breaking Free of Fear-Inspired Paralysis. Loving the discussion going on over there! (And of course, we all love Alex!! Though I’m pretty sure I love him more than you do … because his bear sent me a postcard!!!)

What are you writing/reading this week?

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It’s why I start new blogs at 3am, then never touch them again.

It’s why I own 407.5 notebooks I’ve only written in once.

This week I learned something important about myself: I’m inherently a chooser, not a decider. I like to wake up in a new place every day and say “Hey, this looks good; let’s try it!” And if it sucks, I can choose something new tomorrow.

To choose: to select from a number of possibilities

To decide: to make up one’s mind

I’m retraining myself to be a decision maker. And it’s a tall order.

This week I’ve stuck to a single path: getting my business where I want it to be. I’ve taken a few side roads, but ultimately I keep coming back to that same path and staying on it, because I’ve decided that’s how I’m going to get there.

It’s simultaneously exciting and boring, sort of like a committed relationship. And it’s a little scary… in that “I’ve never been HERE before and what if I get lost?” kind of way.

But that doesn’t make it bad, right? Only unfamiliar. And hard, because it would be a hell of a lot easier to give up and start over. (New journals are so much prettier!)

What path are you on? How do you keep yourself on track?

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Here’s what I’m reading this week. How about you?

Running with the Pack: How to Blog Inside the Box at The Deep Friar

There is Something About Focus at Insanely Interested

If a Writer Writes in a Forest… at Punctuality Rules!

Design a Routine for Exceptional Thinking at Sources of Insight

How to Focus Your Creative Energy to Build that Dream at Successful Blog

How to Launch an Amazing Book Leveraging Web 2.0 and Social Media at marketingHACKZ

A View of Social Media From the Inside: The Cat Hasn’t Meowed Just Yet by Terry Starbucker

The Twittering! A Closer Look at the Social Media Giant at Ar-bent-ing

Thanks For Following, Now Click On My Junk at Altitude Branding

Why Should You Join Twitter? at Today’s Mompreneur

Multi-Jobbing: Freelancing On The Clock at Freelance Folder

What Do You Look For in a Book Review? at Confident Writing

Practicing the Personal Essay at Hell or High Water

Grammar 101: I Could Care Less at Beyond the Rhetoric

What are you reading/writing this week? Share your links in the comments!

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If you haven’t already been by the party, please join me in spanking Kelly. (And tell her you like her paws.)

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Fiction Fridays

How about those clones? (You know, those guys who run in packs.)

Or how about the morons on twitter who keep direct-messaging me their free ebooks about How to Lose Weight While Flipping Real Estate?

Or, let’s see… what else annoys me? Blog designs that give me seizures… people who put pop-ups on their blogs so I can sign up for a newsletter I’m already subscribed to… any movie that has more than three sequels. (Do we really need another Saw movie? I mean, really?)

No? You want a serious post?

Ok. Let’s be serious for a moment.

How sad has Blogland gotten that folks are now writing blog posts to announce they’re going on blog commenting hiatus?

You know you’ve seen them. They look like this:

I’m really busy right now, and I apologize in advance that I’m not going to be doing much blog reading this month. I appreciate all my regular commentators, and I hope you will continue to read my blog. I assure you that I will continue to respond to comments here as I am able. I hope you will forgive me.

Signed,
your faithful blogger

I’ll tell you a secret.

I’ve commented on maybe ten blogs in the last month. No one has missed me. No party was thrown. No nice fruit basket was sent.

I’ve been launching my business blog, traveling to the city to meet with clients, twittering from trains… I even went to a Twitter meetup. Does anyone care? Probably not. Did Blogland go on without me? Yep… sure looks that way.

Why do we take this blogging shit so seriously?

If you’re blogging for your business, s’ok. I get that. You want to post regularly, talk like a grownup, maybe even wear a tie while you blog? Rock on with your bizzy self. Be all that you can be.

But the rest of us? Do we really need to feel guilty about not spending 40 hours a week commenting on other people’s blogs? Do we honestly need to make a deal with the devil to sacrifice our first born if we don’t comment on all the blogs of everyone who’s commented on ours? Will the world end if we miss a day blogging?

Surely not.

People like to tell me to stop spreading rumors that I blog in my pajamas. I’m affecting the global image of probloggers everywhere… or something. Well fuck that. I BLOG IN MY PAJAMAS. That’s right folks. And I’m not hurting your image. You are.

You’re a serious blogger? (You take yourself so seriously that I think you’re funny.)

Want to improve your image? Stop trolling twitter with your autoresponder and your twitterfeed. Stop stopping by my blog to scroll to the comments section and leave some half-assed comment simply because I commented on yours and some idiot told you it was good manners to reciprocate. Stop spending half your day emailing me about my typos.

Surely all of these things will make you famous, earn you big bucks, and keep you looking young… But the clones are getting restless, and so am I.

I’m issuing a challenge…

Take a day off. Go ahead. Try it.

Come back here and report the results. If anyone dies, becomes injured or ill, or a nation explodes due to your absence from Blogland I want to know about it.

There are no prizes. Only deep breaths and cookies.

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Enter The Men with Pens Sticky Business Contest at Men with Pens

Blogging therapy: But I’m not an EXPERT! at Fluent Self

Fortune Favors The Brave. And The Honest. at IttyBiz

Simple doesn’t mean Stupid, or, How to Write So Anyone Can Understand You at Remarkablogger

5 Brand-Building Actions Every Freelancer Should Take Now (by Dave Navarro) at Freelance Folder

Dealing With Impossible Deadlines at The Wealthy Freelancer

Twitter & Stupid Internet Marketing Gurus (a guest post by Tim Brownson) at Cath Lawson’s blog

Are You Listening? Influence and Participation Above the Noise at Successful Blog

Why Community Outreach is Important for Freelance Writers and Bloggers at Freelance Writing Jobs

Happiness or Money: What I Did in an Either/Or Situation at Someday Syndrome

How to Survive NaNoWriMo, Write a Novel, and Avoid Insanity at Quiet Rebel Writer

Conversation That Pays Dividends at Writer Dad

The Game at 6 Weeks

What I Know For Sure at In Other Words

What are you reading/writing this week?

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I was going to try to rewrite an old story for this guest entry.

I was thinking about this yesterday when I saw Writer Dad in a pharmacy. He was a bit difficult to recognize because he was wearing a yellow hat and cheap dollar store sunglasses. I felt like maybe he disguised himself so he could walk unnoticed among the bloggers of his city.

I thought, “Now there is a blogger who has what it takes to be truly amazing.” But I’ve also said that he’s just a businessman, but I don’t think it matters how you look at it - you just can’t ignore him. And if you haven’t read him, just try a few entries.

I promise you’ll enjoy him.

And as I walked down the aisle towards him, I wondered if I should make an offering of a comment or a stumble or a tweet (I can see it now: “I just saw @WriterDad in a yellow hat!”). Or would I have to bow and beg for mercy? At the same time, I wanted to demand what I was promised - the Internet dream of blogging and receiving.

I was told once that it’s not how you play the game, it’s if you win. And if you can’t win, then designate this dream a hobby and find something else. As he was flipping through the same magazine I was reading five minutes earlier, I wondered how long should a blogger blog before deciding that the payoff isn’t worth the trouble?

When there is a new blog created every second, who decides which will be getting an easy ride? And what happens to rest of us? How many of us end up in Google wastelands? Do we all just get a couple of comments before deciding that our words are a waste of precious bandwidth? Hell, just yesterday I was going to rewrite some stupid old story for this guest entry right before I saw Writer Dad in the pharmacy. He was shifting on his feet, looking for something better to read - had he come to see the struggle in the slums of his city?

This is where the proud, noble, and stupid bloggers like me are trying to feed our egos. Where we all band together and give each other CommentLuv - then retreat jealously to our dashboard our friends get so many comments that their pages takes five minutes to load. Screw this! I don’t want to be a part of your high school drama, I’d rather die, I’d rather go back to stone tablets. Then I got asked to write a guest entry and suddenly I’m right back at it.

Hey Tree, guess what? I got invited to do a guest entry!

[No response.]

Yeah, I know it’s great, but I guess I should be writing things that would help people in some way, but I can hardly tell if this blogging thing is even helping me. When I was standing there in the aisle, I suddenly felt like I needed some questions answered, so I turned to him and just started asking.

“Hey Writer Dad or Sean, whatever - do you think there’s a point to blogging, do you think everyone can do it? Or would some of us be better off just working a real job and building a standard home - and should we instead spend our free time with sick children or elderly folks?”

He looked at me from over some stupid magazine and his sunglasses seemed to darken.

“Goddammit man, you have to tell me!” I yelled straight into his face, “I mean, you’ve had some success, you’re like the king of your niche, but even you must want to quit! I mean, look at Darren Rowse or dooce or whoever, you must have thought that you were pretty good - but you probably also believe that you’ll never get to that level. I guess even Darren could have wondered the same thing as well. He probably wishes he was like some famous businessman, but I couldn’t tell you who because I never pay attention to those people. You know, I was going to spend some time today to rewrite an old story for this guest entry over at Amy Derby’s site, and then I saw you here in the pharmacy and I thought I would get your perspective because you probably know what it’s like - because I sometimes go so far off on a tangent that I forget what my point was.”

It was probably when it he frowned and started to scowl that I realized I had made a mistake. He looked down at my fists, which were white-knuckling his coat and then back at me. I let go of his jacket and I started to back away and then I ran like mad out of the store and down the street.

I thought I was safe when I realized that there were footsteps coming up behind me.

He tackled me to the ground and smashed me face against the concrete. He dragged me down the alley, leaving a spotted trail of blood and spit. The world began darken as he slipped off his jacket and started to suffocate me with it. I thought I heard him say: “Bloggers are losers.” before he got up and ran away.

I laid there in the alley for hours, wondering what I should do.

Then I decided that I wouldn’t be rewriting that old entry. I started thinking maybe it wasn’t even Writer Dad - even though he did try to suffocate me like he suggested I do to my self-doubt-self a couple of weeks ago. I guess it doesn’t matter who it was, because I couldn’t forget the words he said:

“Bloggers are losers.”

Like we’re all just kids with zero respect who write out our rants and slap them on trashcans and signposts, wasting our time, wasting our lives; trying so damned hard to get noticed. And other people are smart, strong, and clever - always doing things that could shape and change their lives. I guess it’s kind of stupid, but for some reason, while I was laying in that alley, it made a lot of sense to me.

Like some people write amazing acting like they should - if I could be like that, I would.

But if I’m just a loser, I’ll keep at it and maybe in a few months I’ll write something good.

Matthew Dryden is the kind of man that you usually hear referred to as “a quiet guy” by neighbors being interviewed in front of a yellow police tape festooned house, buzzing with police, and several authorities removing numerous large, bulky bags while a backhoe operator jumps from his vehicle yelling, “I think we found even MORE in the back yard!” Actually, Matthew is an up and coming writer, who loves to violate the dictionary in many different ways.

Disclaimer: No Matthew Drydens were harmed in the making of this guest entry. And Writer Dad? Well… he wrote Matthew’s bio for this post.

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These are some stories I read and enjoyed this week. I hope you enjoy them too. I’ve also included a few markets.

Stories

How You Remember Her by Amy Reed

The Ombudsman Doesn’t Give a Shit by Jess Wigent and Louie Holwerk

Propositions Concerning Animal Magnetism by Tim Conley

Confession by Patrick Loafman

Markets

The Malahat Review publishes poetry, short fiction, and creative non-fiction by new and established writers from Canada and abroad. Pays $40 per published page plus a one-year subscription.

THE2NDHAND considers prose submissions of less than 2500 words. For stories in their print version, we pay between $75 and $300, depending on the availability of grant money.

Event pays $22 per printed page on publication, with a mininum of $25 for one page and a maximum of $500, and publication is within a year of acceptance. Publishes mainly fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction. Publishes mostly Canadian writers, but open to anyone writing in English.

What are you reading/writing this week?

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“How ironic,” I thought, “since most of the people in this waiting room are dying…” and considering how behind this guy’s schedule was, the odds were pretty good that at least a few of us were going to kick off while waiting. If that’s not an emergency, I don’t know what is.

But my Inner-Sarcasmo liked the sign.

The Great Platitudists of Productivity want us to get up earlier to get more done, while the Stress Management Gurus insist the key to inner-peace is in the acceptance that our inboxes will still be half-full when we die.

I want to sleep till noon and delete my inbox. Is that so wrong?

In the big scheme of things, how important is any of this bullshit really? I could waste ten hours a day reading about productivity, but I’m not the sort of person who is ever going to be an early riser who benefits from a to-do list. I could take a meditation class and learn ten ways to breathe through my toe, but I’m not gonna.

My father used to say, “Life is only a movie.” I never understood what he meant by that while he was alive, but I get it now. If you spend your whole life learning the script and practicing your lines to perfection, you’ll never enjoy the show.

How’s your life going?

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