I’ve always wanted to write limericks. I think that they are concise and funny and they tell a story that is easily visualized.

Bennett Cerf got me hooked on limericks. He was a famous editor and publisher. Read his biography at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennett_Cerf.

Take the poem Jack and Jill which is not a limerick:

Jack and Jill went up a hill

To fetch a pail of water.

Jack fell down and broke his crown,

And Jill came tumbling after.

This poem has visual content. If you can’t see Jack and Jill tumbling down the hill there must be something wrong with your mental visualization. You did see them tumbling, right?

In limerick form Jack and Jill might read like this:

There was a young fellow named Jack

Who with Sister Jill made a pact:

If she lugged water up the hill

He would pay her cobbler’s bill

For the shoes she obviously lacked.

I can’t write limericks but you get the idea.

My limericks always start:

There was a lady named Grace

With filthy mud on her face.

While swilling the hogs

Down by the bog,

She slipped and dirtied her lace.

I read the following at http://www.thealternativebookshop.com/poet0016.html: “Historically, limericks are notoriously bawdy. Bennett Cerf, then head of the publishing firm, Random House, was asked how they chose the winner of their limerick contest. He said it was simple; they threw out all that were indecent and the winner was the one that was left.”

Go to this link to review books on limericks: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=ceramicbooks&camp=1789&
creative=9325&path=external-search%3Fsearch-type=ss%26index=books%26keyword=Bennett%20Cerf%20limericks

On a cold winter night you will find

That a good book of limericks is fine.

They’re warm and their funny;

And smooth as warm honey,

And poetry’s one of a kind.”

Have fun writing your own limericks. If you learn the secret, send me a copy of your work. We’ll laugh together.

John T. Jones, Ph.D. (tjbooks@hotmail.com, a retired VP of R&D for Lenox China, is author of detective & western novels, nonfiction (business, scientific, engineering, humor), poetry, etc. Former editor of Ceramic Industry Magazine. He calls himself “Taylor Jones, the hack writer.”

More info: http://www.tjbooks.com

Business web site: http://www.dumbincome.com

There are many advantages to working with an experienced booking agent. First and foremost, working with a good agent can save you a lot of time and legwork. Most agents already have a cache of speakers they know and work with on a regular basis. They are familiar with these speakers expertise and how relevant their topics would be to your audience. If your agent has done their homework well they would have already viewed promotional videos and have a good idea of each speakers presentation style on the platform. They can also negotiate on your behalf and simplify the booking process.

Furthermore, a good agent is one who:

- will be available to answer your questions and gives you honest unbiased answers.

- is one who, when asked, can give you good solid advice that helps you in your planning process.

- will always act with your best interests in mind and want to make you look like a hero.

- will be able to offer valuable insight and fresh ideas that contribute to the success of your event.

- is one that always follows through. Responds to messages or emails and is an effective communicator.

- will contact you after your meeting or event to make sure that everything went as planned.

Develop a relationship with an agent you feel comfortable with and make them part of your event planning “team”. You will be glad that you did.

Written by Yvon Douran, President of Keynote Resource, your preferred bureau and partner for keynote speakers, motivational speakers and corporate entertainment at http://www.keynoteresource.com

Publishing your creative genius on the internet can lead to a wealth of problems not commonly found in the ‘real world’. In the days before the proliferation of the world wide web, crafters and designers were lulled into a false sense of security by the lack of ‘corporate espionage’. After all, we’re a community, right?

Wrong.

Your ideas are your ‘wealth’ and if you do not take the proper steps to protect that wealth, you will be left feeling hopeless and wondering where you went wrong as you watch your competitors profit off of your hard work. Before you begin to sell your wares on the ‘net, there are basic concepts of intellectual property that you should be familiar with and use to your advantage.

I recently spoke with business owners about this very topic and found a common statement in all their stories; it goes something like this:

“I was preparing to contribute to a sample program and shared the ideas for my sample products. A person in an online community I belong to made exactly the same item- including my exact wording and materials- and sent it to the program before I could.”

Don’t let this happen to you.

Intellectual property can take the form of articles, ideas for a new business or even products you’ve developed and are selling via your website. The ways you legally protect your intellectual property vary based on the type of property you are seeking to safeguard. Having a working knowledge of these methods will not only assist you in your own business, but will also assure that you do not infringe upon the rights of others.

One of the most common mistakes made by individuals is that they believe that any work without a copyright notice is free for the taking. While the correct form of copyright notice is “Copyright or © (date) by (author/owner)” the absence of either the word and/or the mark does not give you the right to post, use, or take the work.

Everything published on the internet after April 1, 1989 is copyrighted by the owner or author whether is has a notice or not. You must assume that when you are viewing a website that the content is copyrighted, unless otherwise specified by the author.

However, this inherent copyright is not enough to protect your ideas from theft. As you develop your ideas and move towards making them public (to another individual or the entire world) you need to use a combination of contracts and legal registration to keep them safe.

If you are planning on working with someone to further develop a product or idea (be they employee or partner) you should consider having all parties involved sign a combination “nondisclosure no compete” contract. This is a very basic contract that can be drawn up by most attorneys in a matter of minutes.

A nondisclosure agreement (also referred to as an NDA or a confidentiality agreement) is a contract between parties who promise to protect the confidentiality of secret information that is disclosed during employment, a partnership, or another type of business transaction. If you have entered into a nondisclosure agreement with someone who later uses your secret without your authorization, you can petition the court to stop the violator from making any further disclosures. You can also sue for damages incurred from their disclosures.

Noncompete agreements protect you from losing valuable trade secrets and employees to someone who has previously worked with or for you. In a noncompete agreement, the parties promise not to work for a direct competitor for a specified period of time after leaving the current partnership or employment.

There is nothing more painful than to watch someone you once trusted take your ideas and use them for their own personal gain. While it may seem ‘a little much’ to require this type of document among friends, it is very common for friendships to fail over money and one party to end up slighted and penniless. If you work with anyone who has access to sensitive business information or trade secrets, you will obviously want to prevent them from disclosing this information to your competitors and should move to have a working contract in place.

Now that you’ve covered your ideas with legal documents, it’s time to consider registering them with the US Patent and Trademark Office. There are three ways that you can register your intellectual property: copyright, trademark, or patent. A copyright protects an original artistic or literary work; a patent protects an invention. A trademark is slightly more complicated as there are two types of registered marks. A regular trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design (or a combination thereof) that identifies and distinguishes your products from those of others. For example, the corporate giant Coca-Cola has their ’swirl’ (a design) trademarked.

The secondary type of trademark is called a service mark, and is the same as a trademark, except that it identifies and distinguishes the source of a service rather than a product. A perfect example of a service mark would be Blockbuster; they are a service provider (video rentals) who has registered their name with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Trademarks are the most commonly used form of protection for small businesses. Strangely enough, you do not have to register your mark with the government in order to use the (TM) symbol and claim the rights to the mark- you can establish those rights based on legitimate use of the mark. However, should a problem arise in the future, having the mark registered (as denoted by the (R) symbol) will offer you the following benefits:

* the public will be informed that you have registered the mark;

* the court will assume legal ownership of the mark and your exclusive right to use the mark nationwide on or in connection with the products and/or services you listed in the registration;

* the ability to bring infringement lawsuits over the mark to a federal court;

* the ability to use the U.S registration as a way to obtain registration in foreign countries; and

* the ability to file the U.S. registration with the U.S. Customs Service to prevent importation of infringing foreign goods.

Any time you claim the rights to a mark, you may use the “TM” (trademark) or “SM” (service mark) designation to alert others to your claim, regardless of whether you have filed an application with the USPTO for the mark. However, you can only use the federal registration symbol “®” after the USPTO actually registered a mark- you can not use it while an application is pending.

With a combination of common sense, legal documentation and Federal registration, you can ensure that you are the only one to profit off your creativity, dedication and hard work. To find out more information on the legal documents discussed here, please visit CoolLawyer.com (http://www.coollawyer.com).

If you’d like to begin the process of registering a trademark, service mark, patent or copyright, please visit the US Patent and Trademark office at http://www.uspto.gov.

–Please note that this article is written for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal advice. Only a lawyer can provide you with specific advice relevant to your situation. Should you feel the need to protect yourself or your ideas further, be sure you speak to a local patent attorney. © 2005 by Tamara Dourney.

Tamara Dourney is a mother, owner of Natural Magic Soaps (http://www.naturalmagicsoaps.com) and Editor of Craft Revoution (http://www.craftrevolution.com), an online magazine dedicated to restoring the awareness and appreciation of crafts in today’s world by promoting them, and the talented people who create them, as high-value, desirable alternatives to the offerings of big-box stores.

From our deconstruction of hundreds of Hollywood blockbusters….

The Hero’s Journey is the template upon which the vast majority of successful stories and Hollywood blockbusters are based upon. In fact, ALL of the Hollywood movies we have deconstructed are based on this template.

Understanding this template is a priority for story or screenwriters.

The Hero’s Journey:

a) Attempts to tap into unconscious expectations the audience has regarding what a story is and how it should be told.

b) Gives the writer more structural elements than simply three or four acts, plot points, mid point and so on.

c) Interpreted metaphorically, laterally and symbolically, allows an infinite number of varied stories to be created.

and more…

Sample Movie Deconstructed: Jaws (1975) deconstructed

FADE IN: Context: music, underwater, dark, something, lurking…

Antagonism: Jaws attacks the girl in the water.

Meeting the Hero and Allies in their Ordinary World [home]: Martin, Ellen and Michael Brody at home. Hero’s Backstory: we bought the house in Fall, now it’s Summer; “like you’re from New York.”

Foreshadow of the Journey: the phone rings…missing person on the beach…gotta go.

Warning: “listen chief, be careful will ya…”

Developing Character: Brody on the beach with the boyfriend.

Call to Adventure: finding the body on the beach.

Hero in his Ordinary World [office]: Brody in the office.

Foreshadow of the Adventure: probable cause of death…Shark Attack; the Doctor’s call.

Obstacles to the First Threshold: minor characters and police issues that block Brody out of the office.

The World of the Journey: the characters we meet on the way to the shop.

Forced to the First Threshold: some kids are doing a mile long swim for their merit badges.

Interdictor: the mayor tells Brody he hasn’t the authority to shut down the beach or “yell shark!”

Foreshadow of the Physical Separation: Alex goes into the water.

Hero Frustrated: Brody watching the water, “chief Brody you are uptight.”

Forced to Counter the Interdiction: Jaws attacks Alex; “everybody out…”

Developing Characters and Relationships: the meeting.

Meeting the Shape Shifter: Quint will deliver the head, the tail, the whole damn thing for $10,000.

Seeking Guidance / Developing Characters and Relationships: Brody reading about sharks; with Ellen.

Developing the Antagonism: “Michael, out of the water now!”

Developing the Antagonism: Jaws pulls the pier apart; Brody reading the book; the visual images of shark attacks.

Warnings: Brody tries to get the shark hunters out of the water.

Meeting the Mentor: Matt Hooper arrives.

Developing the Antagonism: Hooper examines the body.

Pushed toward the Physical Separation: Hooper’s examination: it was a shark!

Resisting the Physical Separation: they think they’ve caught the shark.

Foreshadow of the Physical Separation: Quint sails by.

Pushed towards the Physical Separation: Hooper wants to cut the shark open.

Pulled from the Physical Separation: the Mayor resists cutting open the shark.

Pushed toward the Physical Separation: Alex’s mother slaps Brody in the face.

Developing Characters and Relationships; Mentor’s Backstory: Hooper brings around some bottles of wine. Inner Challenge made explicit: Ellen recalls that Brody couldn’t even drive over a bridge.

Physical Separation: they cut open the shark and find no human remains.

Developing Characters and Relationships / Developing Backstory: Brody and Hooper on the boat;

Transformation / Trial 1: the boat is working its way along the territorial waters where the shark has been feeding; they find Ben Gardner’s boat; Hooper goes underwater and finds the dead body.

Transformation / Trial 2: not convincing the Mayor; “tomorrow is the 4 th July…”

Transformation / Trial 3: Amityville is open on the 4 th July; nobody’s going n the water; the false alarm; attack in the pond.

Symbol of Transformation: “take Michael home.” “Home New York?” “No, home here.”

Meeting the Oracle: Brody forces Larry to authorise the hiring of a contractor [Quint].

Entering the World of the Sword: Quint’s place.

Developing Characters and Relationships: “I don’t need this working class hero crap…”

Preparing for the Journey: “what are you, some kind or half arsed astronaut…”

Foreshadow of the Final Conflict: the cage.

Warnings: Ellen says goodbye.

Journey to the Sword: the boat sets sail.

Trial 1 / Developing Characters and Relationships: “keep that chum line going chief…”; the smell…

Magical Gift: Martin drops the compressed air.

Trial 2: Brody ties the knot.

Trial 3: the gamefish / is it the shark? sequence.

Battle with the Guardians: “we’re going to need a bigger boat…”Jaws appears in full length; that’s a 25 footer, 3 tons on him.

Foreshadow of the Near Death Experience: Quint on the radio.

Foreboding / Warnings / Resistance: “foreground my ass!”

Seizing the Sword: harpooning Jaws with the barrels.

Developing Characters and Relationships: comparing scars.

Near Death Experience: the USS Indianapolis story; the whale; the song; Jaws attacks the boat.

Foreshadow of the Final Conflict: Brody with his gun.

Reward: the barrel is up.

Refusal: Quint smashes the radio; there is no going back for a bigger boat.

Atonement with the Father: they harpoon two barrels onto him.

Apotheosis: Jaws goes down with three barrels.

Ultimate Boon: “we’re heading in Brody…”"Thank Christ!”

Magic Flight: Quint pushes the boat until it burns out.

Rescue from Without: “Hooper, what can we do with these things of yours…?”

Foreboding at the Border: “I got no spit…”

Crossing the Return Threshold: going down in the cage:

Catharsis 1: Jaws attacks the cage.

Catharsis 2: Jaws eats Quint.

Master of the Two Worlds:

Brody puts the tank into Jaws’ mouth.

Catharsis 3: Brody pokes Jaws away.

Build up to Final Catharsis: Brody shoots but misses the tank.

Catharsis 4: Brody shoots the tank.

Physical Celebration: Brody screams for joy.

Freedom to Live:

Hooper reappears.

Physical Celebration: Brody and Hooper laugh.

The birds.

Inner Challenge Conquered: “I used to hate the water…”

They swim to shore.

Learn more…

The Complete 188 stage Hero’s Journey and other story structure templates can be found at http://www.clickok.co.uk/

You can also receive a regular, free newsletter by entering your email address at this site.

Kal Bishop

**********************************

You are free to reproduce this article as long as no changes are made and the author’s name and site URL are retained.

Kal Bishop is a management consultant based in London, UK. His specialities include Knowledge Management and Creativity and Innovation Management. He has consulted in the visual media and software industries and for clients such as Toshiba and Transport for London. He has led Improv, creativity and innovation workshops, exhibited artwork in San Francisco, Los Angeles and London and written a number of screenplays. He is a passionate traveller. He can be reached at http://www.clickok.co.uk/

Today, as countless firms & CEOs are looking at internet video websites as a superb place to post content to grab the interest of their audience, it is important to know the basic benefits of utilising internet video promotion portals.

Here are a couple basic bits & pieces you must be acquainted with before you begin to distribute videos on online video portals. Make use of the full potential of Web to your firm with web video marketing strategies from Vidify.

All the time make every effort to use promotional videos that provide useful information to your viewers – A great deal of business people erroneously believe you can just put any kind of advertisement on a video site, but nothing could be any further from reality. Every single video ought to deliver some meaningful information to the desired market, if not then at least topic of discussion.

Undertake some brand of market research on the video sites previous to you adding your first video – it is an outstanding idea to assign some considerable time typing your market’s essential keywords into Yahoo, in an attempt to discover what comparable videos are already online. Next make sure you have noted down the profile names of the most successful organisations in your market. Possibly later down the line you can partake in a joint venture or have some sort of cooperation with these users.

Bear in mind that each and every video site has a society built into it – Because of this you are recommended to respect the other members & it’s advised that you distribute positive annotations to your rivals’ videos. For the most part you must be a member of the community, supplying feedback, ideas etc. And only then must you regard yourself as being a video marketer and start to advertise your own 1 & merchandise.

Commit yourself to making various professional videos – You should have an obvious strategy for producing and distributing quite a few videos. Or else, your profile page on the video sites will give the notion of being empty if it only has one solitary video live. As a result, allot time planning the making of a succession of short videos, instead of one lengthy video.

Web video marketing is one of the most valuable & fastest techniques of advertising at the present time.

Writer/director John Sayles (Passion Fish, Lone Star, The Brother from Another Planet) is very particular about the beginning of his screenplays.

Whether the movies are dark and urban or bright and rural, he likes to let the audience know what kind of world they’re visiting, settling them comfortably into the place where they’ll be spending the next couple of hours.

That doesn’t just entail a nice description of the landscape. Sayles also pays attention to tone and character.

If it’s a comedy or tongue-in-cheek piece like Alligator, he’ll include some humor to clue the audience in. That way they’re “in on the joke” and they’ll know not to take the story too seriously.

If he’s introducing characters, he creates people who’ll credibly exist in that kind of world: gritty cops, square-jawed heroes or desert sheriffs.

He’s not just setting the scene; he’s making the world seem real, giving it a logic that provides believability. Then he gets on with telling the story.

If your screenplay’s going to a reader, don’t be shy to pop some clues in the first ten pages about the style, setting and characters.

It will help that reader to understand what kind of movie you’ve written, and the audience you’re aiming for.

It will help you to establish a rhythm as you’re writing, and get to know your world.

While our own lives are full of coincidences, surprises and inconsistencies, audiences like their movies to be less uneven. So look at your first ten pages and set up some events and locations that you can progress from in a logical fashion.

An example: a hardboiled mystery. We start off in a detective’s office – his personal ‘world’ – meet the hero and a client who leads him to another location. He finds a clue and that leads him somewhere else.

With some noir-ish action along the way, you have set the tone of the movie and the audience knows what to expect.

Then, you can throw them some curveballs…

Every hero has a seminal insight – the apotheosis. Once you know what that insight will be, you can start building your story up to and beyond that point:

In Casablanca, Rick’s insight is that if you love someone, you sacrifice yourself for their happiness. That sacrifice can include selling your most prized material possessions (he sells his bar), allowing your love to find happiness in another’s arms (he ultimately allows Ilsa to be with Victor), physical suffering (it is likely that his ultimate actions will see him to a concentration camp), leaving dear friends (he will have to leave Sam behind) and forced exile from home and heart (he will have to leave Casablanca). He learns this insight from both Ilsa and Victor, who are prepared to do the same for each other.

In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne’s apotheosis is that you either get busy living or you get busy dying. He reaches that insight in the scene by the prison wall with Red (Morgan Freeman), but it is preceeded by the earlier insight that he will never get out of prison (Warden Norton will never let him go). The apotheosis is preceded by the physical processes of submersion (being locked in the hole for two months; the Belly of the Whale of the Ordeal) and rebirth through death (symbolised by the death of Tommy). The apotheosis is preceded by the crossing of the First Threshold and the Ordeal in general.

In Al Pacino Scarface, Tony Montana’s insight is that the rewards of the path he’s chosen are not worth the spiritual price he is paying, expressed with the words (in the restaurant scene): “is this it? Is that what it’s all about Manny? Eating, drinking, fucking, sucking,” “no free rides in this world kid,” “I lost my appetite,” “is that what I worked for? With these hands? Is that what I killed for? For this?”

In Alien, Ripley’s apotheosis arrives during the conversation with Ash, the revived android. He tells her that the alien cannot be destroyed and that the military want it – this horror will be unleashed on the Earth unless she destroys it and the only way to do that is to nuke the Nostromo.

In all of the above, the apotheosis leads straight into the final act. The insight gives the hero strength and focus and helps him (or her) overcome the antagonism and inner challenges.

A detailed analysis of the Apotheosis and story structure templates can be found at http://www.managing-creativity.com/

You can also receive a regular, free newsletter by entering your email address at this site.

Kal Bishop, MBA

**********************************

You are free to reproduce this article as long as no changes are made and the author’s name and site URL are retained.

Kal Bishop is a management consultant based in London, UK. His specialities include Knowledge Management and Creativity and Innovation Management. He has consulted in the visual media and software industries and for clients such as Toshiba and Transport for London. He has led Improv, creativity and innovation workshops, exhibited artwork in San Francisco, Los Angeles and London and written a number of screenplays. He is a passionate traveller. He can be reached at http://www.managing-creativity.com

Videos on the Web are a wonderful way to market your company. For certain there are several other types of marketing approaches around which include article writing to blogging, from public relations to e-mail. Though, nothing says “cool, connection, & creative” like a professional video.

More & more businesses of varying sizes are making video commercials about their offerings. They’re not only posting them on their business websites, but they are adding them to their own blogs. To gain global twenty-four-seven publicity, short format videos are being added to countless video-sharing sites like You Tube and Metacafe. And why not ? it is economical, easy-to-do, and can have a massive difference, in a number of cases, on the traffic it sends to your website.

There are a lot of other reasons why short format videos are an exceptional way to market your organisation.

Online videos benefit from a wide circulation: Videos by their own nature are easy to “package” which makes them ideal to go into an array of different distribution channels. You can post them on your organisations site or blog, otherwise you can put them onto your computer machine and show them time and again at a chosen event. You can add them to hundreds of Web video-sharing social websites. You can burn them onto CDs & give them away or sell them. You can even dispatch them by email.

Short format videos are a fabulous way to communicate. As our knowledge of technology evolves, so do the methods in which individuals like to cooperate with others. Most people are visually oriented meaning that is how they best understand and interact with their world. This makes commercial videos the supreme marketing strategy to talk to today’s clients. Maximise the full potential of the web with strategic internet video marketing from Vidify.

These are just a number of the many reasons why commercial videos might be a valuable way to promote your businesses services. Discover more about this area to see how you might utilise your precious time, finances, and energy to speak with your target marketplace in a pioneering & appealing way.

Question: Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Getting good teachers is more fortunate than getting good parents. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

I agree with the statement.

Every child when born gets good parents for them. However they are behaving to others in life every parent will love and care their child is an illicit law of universe, ofcourse there are some anomali and we are not for talking about them.

On the other hand every kid who grows is not able to get
good teachers for their improvement. Almost all the children get moulded quickly and tractably in the schools.
Because the teachers don’t mollicoddle the children when they do the right things or abuse them when they do wrong.
They are trained and mature enough to treat them to positively mould their thoughts for their bright future.

Good teachers know when to control or to praise them.

If any student is inchoating to do a peccadillo, if he have a good teacher, the teacher will control him by making him to feel the wrong about the behaviour, without hurting or punishing him.

This is a real example I have seen in my life. One of my friends was to attend a dance practice for the Christmas function. All of us have a test that afternoon. He didint read a single word for the test the day before. We adviced him to ask permission from the teacher to do the test the next day. As he is a above average student he dont want to postpone the test. During the test he was caught by our teacher as he copied from book. The teacher doesnt say anything and simply tared the page and said marks for this test is not considered for the exams. If you want you can redo this test tommorrow. If she had thought she could have punished him severely but she left the room quietly. He felt guilty and started to study. Thereafter he never done anything wrong. Our friend secured the class’s first mark in the following months and rest of our school days. Still he remembers the memory of our teacher reverent sister Joseph.

On the other hand some immature teachers are also there who get irritated by the mischief done by the active children.
They ruin the young children by sarcasting them and make them gloomy and the soon the childern gets incorridgeble.

Concludingly if we carefully revise the lives of every sucessful personality he or she would have gotten atleast a best memorable teacher as godfather or a mother angel.

So it is important to a child to get a good teacher than to get good parents.

Have a nice day.
My contact details
http://www.geocities.com/simariba/

Hi
I am a masters graduate currently staying in Singapore. Iam preparing for GRE exam now to join research studies. I also do web designing, DTP and photo editing as hobby. My contact details
http://www.geocities.com/simariba/

Can you make a living as a writer, artist, designer or other creative soul? Yes, you
can, if you learn a few tricks.

The most important trick is to learn to think of yourself as TWO people. The first is
the creative person who writes, paints, photographs or designs, without a care for
anything except the creative work itself. The second person is a sharp-eyed, clear-
thinking marketer.

In many creatives, the sharp-eyed marketer is in embryonic form. Fear not. You can
nurture your inner marketer.

Here’s how to start to make your creativity pay:

=> 1. Start small: downplay your creativity

Your ultimate goal may be a book on the New York Times bestseller list, or your
own show in a major gallery, but start small and build your confidence.

While you’re doing that, downplay your creativity at home and among your friends.
Why? Any number of reasons. The chief one is that your creative endeavors are as
important to you as a new baby is to the proud parents. While you’re a taking the
first hesitant steps of your creative career, you’re sensitive. You’re likely to get badly
blocked if someone whose opinion you value says the wrong thing to you. This
doesn’t mean that you’re completely unsocial. Get a writing or painting pal, take a
course, or join a group. But among your nearest and dearest and closest friends,
silence pays off.

Starting small means small sales, not working for free. There are times you may
choose to give your work away, but in the beginning of your career you need the
validation that only money can give you. So write fillers for magazines (fillers are
small articles, of 200 words or less), advertisements for your local bank, or copy for
greeting cards. Write a short story or two, and submit them for publication.

Anything you write, that you get paid for, will boost your confidence. When you’re
confident enough to disregard ill-informed opinion, you can share your aspirations
freely.

=> 2. Be passionate, not desperate

Your passion and love for your work will sustain you through your career, and your
entire life. However, don’t take this passion for granted. If you don’t nurture it, it
will fade.

Whenever you feel depressed, ask yourself whether you still enjoy writing.
Sometimes the answer will be a loud “no”. Perhaps your writing isn’t going as well as
you hoped it would, or you’ve had some drama in your life, or you’ve been rejected.
At these times, remind yourself that you love what you do, and ask yourself what
you would enjoy writing today. Then do that. Work on rebuilding your love for your
writing first, before you concern yourself about anything else.

If success comes slowly (or hasn’t arrived yet), don’t become desperate. Be patient.
Selling your creativity takes time. If you can sense desperation taking hold, remind
yourself that you’re writing because you love to write.

Writers (and other creatives) may become desperate because of others’
expectations. “Have you sold that book you were working on?” “Have you sold a
painting?” This pressure is why you play your cards close to your chest. (See
“downplay your creativity”, above.)

=> 3. Market your work

When should you start to market your work? Immediately. As soon as you’ve written
something that you feel is publishable, send it out.

This is where you tuck your creative self away, and haul your inner marketer out of
the closet. Divorce yourself from your work as much as you can. Grit your teeth, and
flail yourself with a whip if necessary, but send your work out. Then forget it. Your
first marketing efforts may be torture. That’s OK. You don’t have to enjoy
marketing, you just have to do it.

Starting small is important for writers, because you can send out a short story or a
filler article without writing a query letter. For a new writer, query letters can be
dangerous. Here’s why: some writers never get beyond a query letter. Ask any
editor. These writers write lots of query letters, get good at it, and then one day an
editor calls their bluff and sends them a contract. At this, the query writer panics.
Not only doesn’t she write the article, she gives up writing for several years. Then
she starts again. Writing query letters…

The good news is that once you’ve got into the habit of writing and sending your
work out, you can stop worrying. Sooner or later you’ll get a check. (Sooner, we
hope.)

The big benefit of marketing is that after a while it stops being a trauma. It starts to
become fun. Your inner marketer is all grown up. Then the only problem you have is
getting organized so that you keep track of what you sent where.

If you follow the three strategies above, you will make your creativity pay, and
sooner than you think is possible.

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