Things you can control

Things you can control:

• making your best work, every time.
• putting together a team of people who you believe can fulfill your vision
• developing your unique voice
• baring your soul on the page
• continuing to create things you believe in
• doing consistent marketing
• finding new ways to engage with fans
• really connecting to fans
• reaching out to fans and friends regularly to check in
• connecting with new people in your industry that you find interesting
• keeping up with connections both old and new
• maintaining a project budget and following it
• getting your projects done on time and on budget (usually)
• being helpful and nice to everyone you meet, until they prove unworthy of your help or niceness

Things out of your control:

• how people will react to your work
• whether your work with resonate
• if your work will blow up and become a huge hit

The only way you know for sure is put it out and try your best. If you’re lucky a very few things you make in your whole life with transcend the public zeitgeist and become hits that resonate with lots of people.

If I’m lucky, at the end of my life the public will remember Ichabod, the Godsverse Chronicles, and The Complete Creative, and maybe one other thing, but honestly, if something else comes on that’s a bigger hit, something else will probably be replaced, and I’ll no longer be known for that anymore, at least to the general public.

My other work might resonate with certain people, but when people put together my obituary, those will be what people talk about, unless something comes along and blows those away.

Most of my work languishes in obscurity. Some of what I consider my absolute best work never gets read.

Keep creating. Keep improving. Keep putting things out there, and keep trying to hit the bullseye every time, but you usually won’t, which is why you have to be internally motivated, and proud of your work regardless of the outcome.

Plus, if you are proud of it, you will fight harder for it, and you have to be a fighter to have anything break through and become a hit.

Oh, and somebody asked for the things you can control in a checklist, so…here you go.

Simple Charcoal and White Writer Checklist