Blog Post 1: The website and the warrior
And so this first blogpost will be about…the website (sigh).
You know how Steven Pressfield talks about the “resistance?” Of course, that applies to more than writing. But he’s a writer and I have to assume most people who follow his non-fiction are artists of some type. I mean, he wrote The War of Art. Well, I don’t have a lot of resistance to writing, or even editing. I love reading my own stuff. I think it’s damn good. That’s not to say I don’t have my days. But generally speaking, I don’t struggle with resistance in respect to my writing.
This is where I struggle: building the business, and more specifically, the blue-collar aspects of the business, that I not only have no interest in, but seem like sorcery to me, and make me feel so small. Right now, I’m struggling to build this website. I’d rather write. I don’t like websites; I don’t even like using them. I’m a millennial with the tech knowhow of a boomer. I spent something like twenty minutes last night trying to get a specific picture of my book on the “books” tab, where, you know, I’m actually trying to sell the book. Twenty minutes! At the time of writing this, I still haven’t finished it. I just gave up and, after committing to coming back to it this weekend, decided to write instead. I just remember thinking, “if I had an assistant, or website guy, like the big shots do, I could let them handle this and it would get done that much faster and I could get back to writing, or play with my daughter, or watch a Zack Snyder movie, or maybe just fall asleep on my couch with a glass of wine in my hand. Yet here I am, going to war with a picture. Or, trying to avoid going to war with a picture. There you have it, the resistance.
Truth is, I’m not a business man, or a website designer. I had no idea what a domain name was until I started building this site. And even though I’m using Squarespace, which really does seem like the easiest platform builder by the way (did I get that nomenclature right???), everything has seemed hard. Worse still is the fear that these little details will be the difference that make the difference. What if my book really is good? What if it really has the potential to catch on fire, bringing entertainment and catharsis to many, and changing my stars, changing my daughter’s stars? What if all of this is true, but what keeps these dreams from becoming reality is that I don’t have a user-friendly and highly visible website, or a strong enough social media marketing campaign, or I just don’t manage the business part of my art well?
These are the rants of a man who has committed himself to fight a battle which he cannot escape, yet bristles mightily against it. We all need to rant sometimes. But the truth is, once I’m done whining (or blogging), I’m going to shut the fuck u and get to work. I am going to build this website, I will build a social media campaign, I will manage this “business,” and I will do all of these things the “right” way. Because I’m going to teach myself to do them with the discipline of a Spartan, and once properly educated, I will put my hands to the wheel and spin these things into existence to the best of my ability. That’s the “right way” to do things, with all your heart, vulnerable, holding nothing back. “If you’re going to screw up, screw up going full speed,” as my old football coach used to say. Whether or not these things could be done better is not the question. Of course they all could have been done better. But perfection is an illusion that keeps many from making any progress at all. I will do these the best way I know how. You see, I have to. I make no bones about my intentions. I want this book to make money, and if it makes a lot of money, that will change my daughter’s life. Moreover, I owe it to Zeno. His story deserves to be told. But it also deserves to have the best chance to reach the widest audience possible. I have to give this book the best chance it can possibly have to succeed. And so I find that I am now a web designer. God help me…
We all have our individual struggles and doubts. We all have our demons screaming in our ears, at times merely annoying, at other times potentially lethal. We must exercise these spirits of self-doubt, fear, and apathy, every day. To contend with these forces is what makes us fully human. So here I go, diving into the deep waters of both hope and failure, to whatever end.
