Red Room Where the Writers Are

This is a blog entry of a comment I made on this RedRoom.com blog: How to not sell your book... and quickly

I am the most pessimistic person you'll ever meet. I have wasted so much time on social networking site everyday for 7 years, that it eventually drove me to take 40 days and 40 nights of complete abstinence from the internet. What I found out when I got back was that I did not miss it, and that my inbox was filled with thousands of messages__which I went through one by one to see if there was any value there. Of the 13,000 emails there was two: one from a friend I have been communicating with for 7 years and the other from another friend I have been communicating with for 6 years__we have something in common: we like each others company.

What you write still advocates building social connections with the promise of hope that you will convert connections to readers. This is not true. In fact what really happens is you will find a few people out of thousands who you actually like and until you have communicated on a regular basis with them for several years, you will not have built any trust with those soon to become friends like the two I have.

So at the end of the day, if you are not Dan Brown or Paulo Coelho, your time is better spend writing in obscurity for the simple fact that you will get better and better at the craft of writing. You will find your voice. You will write a very good novel. But then what do you do?

And that is where the uninitiated will fall flat on their face every time. I guarantee that. Why? Because I have invested the time in the Net at the expense of writing and found out at the end of 7 years non-stop social networking I would not promote my book using the net. Period.

But as I said I am a pessimist and this comment alludes to the doctrine "there seems to be no possibility of comfort or success; "in an agony of hopeless grief" [via http://www.tfd.com/pessimistic ].

So where does that leave me? I enjoy writing and write everyday. I write for the simple pleasure of sitting in my favorite cafe each morning surrounded by familiar and open to the possibility that I might meet a new person or meet someone I haven't seen in a long while. This is living. Having delusions that I am going to be a writer is like playing the stock market of which I am an expert__and even there I am a pessimist because after a successful career of telling other stock brokers what to buy we all eventually lost if we were the honest ones, and the ones that weren't still continue to rape everyone for the almighty buck or they are dead, or in jail.

I am serious folks. I challenge anyone who is a published author to build a fan base of 1000 friends__and not the I am connected to you so you are my friend type__I am referring to Kevin Kelly's [bio link: http://www.kk.org/narrative/ ] article: 1,000 True Fans [ url link here: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php ]. I do not know of any writer or anyone else for that matter that has done what Kevin suggests: "A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living."__Kevin Kelly explains: "A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can't wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans."

How do you do this? Nobody knows, but my best guess is to actually make the time to do what ever it takes to know 1000 true fans personally__and from my experience I have two true fans and about 20MM people who know about me. Those two friends are fans and it took 6-7 years to build the trust in the relationships that resulted a true friendship.

Is it all worth it? Only you know!

Kindest,
Michael Pokocky