Weekly Challenge: Cultivate a Seed

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What we are in the future is determined by our past and our present.  The past is, well, past.  The future is yet to be determined.

So it's what we do in the present that matters.  We can miss this fact as we're looking too far back or too far forward.

So here's your weekly challenge.

Right now there's something you want to be or do in the future.  You aren't there yet, but you will be and hope to be.  Much like creating a garden, you've got a few planted seeds that you are hoping to cultivate into something wonderful.

Identify one of your "sees" right now.  Maybe it's trying to exercise more so you loose weight.  Maybe it's to learn a programming language to be a programmer.  Maybe it's to read more and get smarter.

Pick one of these seeds and ask yourself what you're doing to cultivate it and protect it so it can grow.  Are you reading up on eating better to improve your health?  Are you studying every day to improve your programming skill?  Do you have a big sticker on your television to remind you to read a half hour a day?

Identify what you're doing to protect and nurture that seed.

After that, maybe you'll want to take a look at the other seeds you've planted for the future . . .

– Steven Savage

Book Update 2/1/2010

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And now the latest update on the Fan To Pro Book!

Updates:

  • I rearranged my current schedule to get the book formatted and in beta early so I can spend time tweaking it – or get it out early.
  • It's going to be 100-120 pages long, as noted, but I'm still tweaking things.  There's an awful lot of choices about fonts, margins, and spacing that really you can't see until you try them on large parts of the book.
  • I have devised a marketing plan based on my readings I'll be getting to soon.

Things I learned:

  • Covers are a pain. Think it's simple?  Wrong, it's horrible to decide.  I've had people offer to help which is nice, but only recently did I figure out the approach I wanted to take – I'm going to go more simple and businesslike for the first edition because the cover will be easy to make out on the sites that will show it.  Plus, really, there's so many possible messages I'd rather let the text speak for itself right now.
  • It's better to get a book in ready-to-print format early.  It teaches you a lot that may affect your plans for marketing, distribution, etc.
  • Formatting is a lot less fun than writing it.

Still on track for March/April 2010!

– Steven Savage

Fandom And Persistence

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You'd like to be a writer.  Or an artist.  Or a webmaster.

You create fanfic.  You create fanart.  You make fansites.

There's just one problem – you're sort of bad at it.  Your worries are that you're never going to make it to "good" on the fandom level, let alone on the professional level.  Your biggest concern is you're lousy next to amateurs.

My advice to you is – if you want to do it, don't give up.

Wanting to do something will spur you on.  You'll spend more time, double down on your efforts, and in general, keep trying to grow.  You'll keep trying.  If anything, you'll put in enough effort that by sheer dint of trying you'll improve, or at least become less worse.

This isn't meant to be sarcastic, it's meant to be true.

If you're good at something you can almost certainly look back at a time you were lousy at it or didn't even know what it was.  You're in that state right now as you assess your horrid writing, bad organizational skills, or inability to make a simple seam on a costly costume.  Your incompetence is merely the start of getting better.

Persistence in the face of our own mistakes is one of the major things that leads to success.  Keep that in mind.

– Steven Savage