2) And then there were blogs

So, now I've got my second computer set up in my study, so I can be doing production on my work, whilst my Beloved is answering all her e-mails. With two people in the house, these days, it's very important to have two fully functional computers. I do have my laptop, but it's not as fast and powerful as I'd like. I may upgrade, or I may buy a new PowerBook and just be done with it.

But back to blogs... Having my print pubs in the works, I'm finding it increasingly important to focus on my blogging, to fill in the blanks and flesh out the details that are touched on in print. I'm finding that print and electronic formats can complement each other nicely, not only in terms of what can be said and debated, but also in terms of what parts of the brain they speak to. Blogs are a great way for "digressionists" like myself to interject into the story additional details that wouldn't necessarily fit in print. In the course of telling a story in print, you need to stay on topic. You need to have flow. But some anecdotes are too good to lose along the way, and I'm finding that a lot of the edits I remove in the course of editing for print, actually work very nicely in a blog.

I'm presently editing Fuel and I'm finding places in the text that could bear some expansion or tie-ins with archived BBC.com comments about the fuel protests of 2000 (even the more recent threats of fuel protests that have been happening). But in print, it would just detract from the storyline. Even if the asides are fascinating and relevant, including them would disrupt things. And they would muddle the subject.

So, here's where the blog comes in... With the blog, http://fuelbook.blogspot.com/, I can talk about the process, talk about the subject, cross-link with relevant online information, and develop a more multi-dimensional conversation about the issues at stake. I can cross-link to material that not only complements the book, but makes the content "actionable", in that people can actually do something with the info that's in print.

Of course, at this writing, the print book isn't officially out yet, so it's a moot point at present. But I'll have a print version ready by this time next week, so I'm not so concerned about that... (and if you're really eager to read the words, you can find an online version at http://members.aol.com/KLStoner/fuel/).
The main thing is, I've figured out how to connect my blog(s) with my print work, in ways that complement both, don't take away.

Another feature of blogs, is that they allow comments from folks. It's a double-edged sword, of course, since folks can post just about anything they like, and you don't have control (horror of horrors), but at least it's a way for readers to get involved. More thinking on this later.

The importance of planning

So, yes, I've got my work cut out for me, with regard to my projects, and yes, it is a tall order I have before me. Last time I checked, I had no less than 16 publishing projects underway, all of them in various states of completion. Some of them are more "baked" than others, some of them are just glints in my eye. And in the wings, I've got 12 more projects just aching to be tended to. They'll have to wait.

For each of these projects, I will be producing:
1) a printed book, published through Lulu.com
2) a regularly updated podcast
3) a regularly updated blog

Some of them will be "bundled" with others -- my multi-version As A Man Thinketh is not going to have a separate podcast and blog for each version, but they'll all come together. And the same holds true for my different poetry books.

Even so, it's still a tall order to do all of this and stay current in three different media. How can it be done? Can it be done at all?

Oh, yes, it can be done. With proper planning and disciplined follow-through, it can really, truly be done.

First order: Get the proper tools.

For the blogs, I make sure that I've got a blog setup (I presently use Blogger, because it's what I'm familiar with and it's free).

For podcasting, I've got my portable iRiver 890 and monaural headset microphone, which has a suprisingly good quality, compared to the microphone on my PC. And I've got Audacity (and Wavepad for backup) for editing. I've also got Podtopia.net, which is a podcasting platform I built myself, being dissatisfied with the other podcasting services out there.

For print, I've got my Lulu account set up, and I know the publishing process well.

For publicity, I've got my list of free press release distribution services.

For my website(s), I've got my servers set up, and my host chosen.

For all of the above elements of my process, I know how to do what I'm going to do, and I know how to do it fast and cheap. Wicked fast and wicked cheap. All I need now, is time.

When time is your "gating factor", its abundance (or lack thereof) determining the level of your success, planning becomes key. I'd say it becomes even more critical than, say, technical expertise or equipment. Because no matter how proficient you are at your execution, if you don't have it all planned out and properly timed, you're screwed. Even if you don't have a mini media empire to launch, if you can't plan to do the things you love, you may never get the chance to do those things, in this busy day and age.

I've learned that much the hard way. I've got a strong academic streak, and I love to dabble and explore new ideas. I have a wide variety of interests that consume my attention. But I also have a family I need to provide for, and my household has to come first. After years of having to fit all my projects in around a 9-to-5 job that didn't leave me much time for the things I love most in life, like writing and studying and reading and exploring new ideas and concepts and inventions, I've developed an almost compulsive planning streak that has allowed me to both ply my day-job trade and do well at it, as well as develop a whole lot of writing projects on the side, program content management systems, and read all about the 12th Century Renaissance in Western Europe.

Some people would look at all I've had going on, over the years, and shake their heads, thinking, "This is way too much for any one person to do." Au contraire. With proper planning and lasered focus, it is indeed possible to get everything done, and have time left over to relax in the evening with your loved-ones. You just have to know exactly what you want to do, and when you want to do it by. Then things fall together.

In fact, I've found that the more you have to do, the more you can get done. Proper planning makes it possible for you to group your interests and needs together, so you can knock out a bunch of related activities at the same time. Take, for example, the 45-minute commute I'd been doing for four months, while on a tech writing contract. I had gone from a 20-minute commute, which allowed me to get writing done in the early a.m. before I went off to work, to twice that time in a car. Some might say I'd lost a lot of time. But when I planned out my day and I collected the proper equipment, those 45 minutes turned out to be some of my most productive. With an iRiver MP3 recorder an a headset microphone, I was all set to record hours and hours of podcasts for later production. Now I've got probably around three months worth of podcast content to edit and post on several different podcasts. All I need is the time to produce them, and I'm set.

Just one example of how you can get more done, when you plan. No matter what life sends your way. Make lemonade, already!

So, that being said, 16 projects underway may seem like a tall order, but I've got things all planned out. Check back again, to see how I'm faring. I promise to tell the truth, if it doesn't work out as planned.

What It's All About : 1) Print Publishing

The first order of this PEAPOD publishing mix is Print Publishing. I use Lulu.com to print my books on demand. Thus far, I have a couple of books out: The Cycle Calendar, a 5-year monthly planner for (peri)menopausal women, Strange Bedfellows, a book version of an epic dream I had, many years ago, and I'm presently working on Fuel: Memoirs of A Crisis, a memoir of the fuel protests in England in 2000. My partner Laney and I were vacationing in Cornwall when it all went down, and it was quite eye-opening to be stranded by political action, when you're expected back at work in a week.

I'm still finishing up edits on Fuel, but I hope to have it ready to go within a few weeks. One of the nice things about doing the PEAPOD Mix, is that in the process of reading the chapters for my virtual book tour (more on this fabulous idea later), I'm coming across places where the copy needs to be edited, and (horror of horrors!) some typos have slipped by me. It always pays to go back over your work with a fresh set of eyes, and the PEAPOD Mix lets me do just that, looking at print from the perspective of audio... and realizing that the site where the original was posted could probably use some help, as well.

I'll also be publishing my poetry (at long, long last). In book form. I had published a lot of it in chapbook form in the mid-90's, but I really do need to come up with a book-sized product that sits as nicely in my hands as the poetry books from other folks I've been reading for years. I still need to sort through what I've got -- decades worth of verse, some of it better than I remember, some of it hardly as good as I once thought. I need to balance out the amount of poetry I include in each collection (at this point, I'm thinking there will be three or four book-length collections) with an acceptable number of pages, so the books don't turn out too slim to be respectable... or too thick to be cost-effective.

Other projects I've got going on, are revised versions of "New Thought" classics like As A Man Thinketh, which will become As A Woman Thinketh, As You Think, and As I Think, with the gender specificity and the person of each version changed. I actually built a cgi program a number of years ago, that would replace all the gender specifics and person information to user-specified values -- for example, changing "A man does this" to "a woman does this", "you do this", or "I do this", respectively. I love the book, which is in the public domain (meaning it's open season on different people selling the content), and it's been a mainstay for my own personal development. And when I changed the person and the gender and re-read it, it took on new meaning for me, each time. So, I've used my "customizer" to generate four different versions of the "AAMT" text, and I'm going to put them into print format. Of all my projects I've got going, I think this is the easiest -- the least number of moving parts. All I have to do, is create the first one, get all the book formatting proper and such, and then duplicate that effort across the other three versions. The content is already created. I just need to format it, and publish it through Lulu.com.

There are other projects, of course... collections of short stories and other writings I've got on hand. But right now, I'm focused on Fuel, and I need to finish that before anything else. The four versions of "AAMT" will be my reward for finishing Fuel. They'll be the payoff.

Of course, all this will be fully documented, as I go, which is in fact another project in and of itself. I'm writing a book about how to create your own virtual book tours (more on that in a later post), as well as how to use Podtopia.net to create podcasts (much more on that in other posts, as well as at the Podtopia blog). And of course, there's more podcasting info I've got to get into book form, so that I can land squarely on my feet after Christmas, when everyone has their brand spankin' new iPods. It's a secret, though. That other project has much potential to generate substantial lucre, and I'm not giving it away so some one else can do it before me. No way.

I've clearly got my work cut out for me.

One thing at a time...

I have nothing but respect for people who know how to do one thing, and do it well. People who pick a career in college and decide to stick with it, even if it's not THE career they will hold for all their born days. People who change careers at "mid-life" (be that 35 or 40 or 50) and then stick with that newly chosen calling. People who specialize in an area and become experts at what they do, and have all the world coming to them, asking for their input and guidance. People without whose contributions we would be sunk, lost, listing to port or starboard, or spinning wildly out of control, the engines in one wing of our plane spewing smoke and shrieking with distress.

I am not one of those people. For better or for worse, there's a whole lot more to me, than one career, one discipline, one area of expertise. I'm a generalist, with the kind of mind that is not content to revel in its expertness in one single area, while there are other areas to be explored. And my mind is not happy to achieve transcendance at the expense of diversity. I have a hungry mind, a greedy mind, a gluttonous lust for information and experience. And no matter how highly I esteem the focus of others who are less intellectually promiscuous, but more materially accomplished, I cannot seem to compel myself to stick with just one thing for long. Not when there are other interests out there to explore.

And explore, I have. Geographically, professionally, intellectually.

Geographically:
Throughout the USA, on East Coast and West. Across the nation, back and forth twice. Across the Atlantic, throughout Europe (the Western part, that is, at the time I was there -- the Wall was still up in Berlin, the Cold War was still on, and I couldn't see why I should have to fill out all the paperwork and be chapperoned in order to see the dingy Eastern Bloc, which struck me as being an uninterrupted mass of depressing grey reminders of What Once Was, What Might Have Been, and What Will Never Be). Back and forth across southern England, mostly in Cornwall.

Professionally:
I began earning money working for others when I was 12 and started doing half-hearted (and admittedly half-assed) yard work for the funeral home next door. Babysitting didn't work out. Just ask the parents of the infant I stopped watching just long enough for him to roll down the hill and towards the street, while I was comforting his 4-year-old sister who had just fallen flat on her face and left some skin on the pavement. The paper route was... well, a paper route. And getting up early before church each Sunday to roll and deliver papers was... character building, I guess. In high school, I washed dishes at The Big A, the Akron Restaurant, where all the most promising youngsters put in their diligent stints and you could hook up with the older staff to score a fifth of "JD" (your friend and mine at the time, Jack Daniels). Then it was on to college, where I paid my way by tutoring middle-aged women who were finishing their degrees in fin-de-ciecle Viennese art history, monitoring computer users, tutoring a local kid in German, and doing yet more food service and catering work. After a few years Stateside, I decided to head to Germany, where I picked up work typing translations for an American translator who specialized in automotive technologies. Couldn't stay there forever... so I moved back to the States and found a job with a little business-to-business publishing company. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for publishing (being a writer and all), but for some reason, I really excelled at marketing, not the writing end of things, and I kicked ass coordinating cardpack mailings in the US and Canada. From there, it was a several-month stint as an office manager for a traveling salesman with a lot of dark secrets, and then I moved to Philadelphia, where I did legal secretarial work whilst taking in odd freelance writing/editing/typing jobs and working on my novel. The novel didn't work out, but I did earn a handy living with those lawyers. But all good things must come to an end. Out to California -- got into high tech, and writing software documentation, got dot-bombed ten years before everyone else, did some freelance tech writing, took up human resources support work, and realized that, job-wise, things were not going to happen for me in California... Then back to the East Coast, where I've temped, managed a word processing department for a mid-sized law firm, and finally landed in web development with Fidelity Investments, where I was destined to stay until, oh, about two days ago.

Intellectually:
I've been roaming the intellectual landscape all my life. In books, in ideas, in discussions... My parents are both very heady, intellectual creatures, and they love to "dialogue", so I had plenty of practice exploring ideas from a very early age. I've been in and out of books, be they fiction or non-fiction. Favorite fiction authors of my youth: Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck and Louis Lamour. Favorite non-fiction subjects: American Indians, botany, inventions. Favorite fiction authors of my adult life: None that I can think of, though I enjoy Barbara Kingsolver and Louise Erdrich... most current fiction writers bore the shit outa me. Favorite poets of my youth: Adrienne Rich, Marge Piercy, Robert Bly. Favorite poets of now: classical poets, can't think of any off the top of my head. I've been reading, and writing, since I can remember. And my first collection of short stories at the age of eight (even then, I couldn't constrain myself to just one thing -- why write just one short story, when you can write four?). I wrote my first novella when I was nine. Or maybe ten. I've written scores of poems, reams of journal entries, and I have a bunch of unpublished books behind me. To date, I've written... oh, let me see... three or four novels, several collections of essays, an impassioned and quite muddled memoir of a very traumatic time in my life, and several short story collections, none of which have yet seen the light of day in print. Some of it I've posted on websites, others I've tried to get published, and got accepted -- then turned down (thanks, but no thanks, sorry for the inconvenience) -- most of it, I've just had stashed in boxes of files, and they've followed me around as I've moved from place to place. I've always been more interested in the experience of writing, than having the final product to show for it. Plus, it's a lot less dangerous, if you never risk showing your work to anyone. Remember, I'm intellectually promiscuous. Showing my work to someone might actually establish a relationship of ideas with them. Oh, and let's not forget the online world. What better place to be an intellectual slut? I've been online since, oh, 1992, when I discovered the University of Minnesota at All The Gopher Servers In The World, and I haven't looked back since. Especially since the Web took off in the mid 90's.

But all this catting around, gets a little wearing. I just turned 40 -- okay, okay, so I turned 40 six months ago, but I'm a lot closer to 39 than 49, so I get to say I "just turned" -- and at some point one needs to STOP and take stock of the situation. This is what I'm doing for the next three weeks. I'm taking stock and finishing up a mountain of side projects I've had going, over the years. I'm not telling my parents that I've quit my job without another solid prospect -- they'll worry, and they'll expect me to spend even more time traveling and spending time with my family over Christmas. This holiday season is about me, it's about my life, it's about figuring out not only where I want to go, but where I've been, and properly producing evidence that, yes, I have been really, really, really busy on my own time, lo these many years.

Now I'm cut loose from my moorings till the end of the year, when I'll resume my search for a respectable, lucrative job in the greater Boston area (no North or South Shore, please -- I'm on 495, but I don't want to start each day looking at taillights for an hour). I'm on my own for the time being, and I've resolved to make a go of sticking to one thing, and one thing only until the beginning of 2006. I've been writing since I was eight years old -- 32 years, no less -- and what do I have to show for it, other than the memory of rejection slips, a few poems and essays published in little magazines, and a hodge-podge collection of personal websites? What indeed, do I have to show for all my work, all my passion, all my secret commitment to a writing way of life that sets me apart as distinctly different from most of the folks I know?

Not a hell of a lot. But that's about to change. I'm on a three-week mission to publish my poetry and other projects in book form, generate some buzz, put the creations of my mind and heart out there in front of all the world. I've got a whole lot of knowledge about how you generate buzz, about how you catch people's attention online, about how you get yourself seen and heard over the internet, and I'm about to put all that to good use. That's what the next three weeks are about -- PEAPOD - Print, Electronic, Audio Publishing On Demand. Building up a body of work in print, web and sound, that is an accurate representation of my work, my passions, my commitments, my beliefs.

It might sound like a tall order, to get this underway in three weeks, but y'know what? I've been thinking about this and planning this and mapping this all out, for years. It's taken me that long, between my full-time job and my full-time domestic relationship, to get to a point where I can say, "Yes, I'm good to go." I've got enough of a nest egg to see me through the next couple of years before I completely run out of money (tho' I'd rather start earning enough in '06 that I don't need to completely drain the nest egg). I'm very clear on what needs to happen for my work to get out there and be properly represented in the world. I've got the resolve and the critical mass of being fed up with having nothing to show for all my work over the years. And I've got three weeks to set the wheels in motion.

Let the wheels start turning outside my head, as well as inside it. For once in my life, I'm going to do one thing consistently for three weeks -- live like a writer, act like a writer, BE a writer.