What Are Your Ambitions?

Can you remember the point in your life when you thought, “I want to make a living from writing”?

Whether it be paid blogger, an article writer, a journalist, a novelist or screenplay writer; was there an actual clear as a bell lightning strike from the creative heavens?

It’s difficult not romanticise yourself gently placing down your finished copy of ‘The Great Gatsby’ and staring off toward the setting sun, breathing the words, “I hear your words Mr Fitzgerald and I answer your call. I will take up your mantle and write the next great American novel.”

When your realisations set in, what were your original ambitions? A best selling novel? A blog followed by tens of thousands? A syndicated column in the New York Times? Money? Personally, when I realised I wanted to make a living from writing I envisaged myself, within a matter of months, regaling the New York literati with heady tales of teenage life in South Wales. I actually imagined myself chatting with the author of Catch 22, “Oh yes, Joseph Heller, you could say that times were moving fast and urgent decisions were to be made. The lure of literature was too strong, I had to succumb to my muse. I didn’t write this book/article/blog post, it demanded to be channelled.”

The reality, unfortunately, is probably a lot more mundane. You’d probably just finished an average novel with a poor, rushed ending whilst on your third glass of wine and tossed the tome casually to one side cursing the time you had wasted on it. Or maybe you went slightly crazy over the grammatical errors in a three thousand circulation free ad newspaper. You maybe considered sending a four page letter cataloguing the myriad apostrophe catastrophes throughout the rag then shouted to the heavens, “GOOD GOD! I could do so much better than that. You know what, I am going to start a blog, TONIGHT.”

Of course, now the ambition touch paper had been lit and you now have the obsessive compulsion to began scribbling down your observations and thoughts on every scribeable surface and then storing them in the least obvious places imaginable. For example, you wake up on an idle Tuesday and decide to post a blog entry. But wait, where are those dialog sections I transcribed from memory in the toilet of a Gas Station? Oh yes, I wrote it in nail varnish on a napkin and put in my sock. And where are the notes from my chance meeting with Robert Downey Junior in a hot air balloon over the Serengheti? Oh yes, they’re in my impossibly complicated filing system that consists of a twenty seven shoe boxes at the bottom of my spare bedroom closet cross referenced by importance, saleability, cleverness, funniness and neatness of handwriting. Oh, and if you can’t find that one five line note that completes the masterpiece of your third personal blog post, your YouTube comments would become especially vitriolic that day.

My own journey was a lot more simple. I was a pretentious teenager for all the wrong reasons. I had read a little Voltaire, a lot of Twain, loads of Shakespeare, a pinch of Heller, far too many trashy newspapers and watched too much TV to have a balanced view on reality. Also, I read a LOT of comics which obviously deeply affected my attitude toward every day situations. With these influences fuelling my somewhat erratic to approach toward my future intentions, I inwardly began to shape my destiny. Or destinies, I should say. At any one point in my younger days I imagined myself to be a professional Soccer Player, a TV and Film Actor / Director, a Model (that’s where my imagination really fooled me), an architect, a doctor, an Archeologist (thanks Indiana Jones), a Smuggler (and yes, thanks Han Solo) and a Journalist. And all this was before I had actually left my bedroom and ventured to my sanctuary, the library. As a teenager with too much time on his hands, varied and bizarre information sources equal unchecked ambition and rampant, misguided egomania. This was followed by the crushing realisation that you were not, in fact, superhuman but simply a teenage boy with a feverish imagination desperately in need of an outlet.

So writing it was, and writing it remains. And whilst my ambitions have become certainly more tempered as the years have passed, my passion remains undimmed. As does my belief that one day I will discover my real superpower.

Do You Follow for the Sake of Following?

by Deb Ng

It’s no secret I have plenty of followers. It humbles me to know there are so many people interested in what I have to say or that I tell funny little stories about my dog. At least I hope that’s why you follow me, I’d hate to be followed just for the sake of being followed.

Let me explain…

Recently I received several friend requests on Facebook and some follows on Twitter that have me scratching my head. For instance, the person who told me I was a fake and a phony two years ago, and the person who last year told me I was a horrible advice giver and the people who subscribe to this blog “sheep.”

Why would they want to follow me? I mean, if they don’t agree with me or what I do, why the follow? Am I being followed just for the sake of racking up friends and followers, or do these folks really want to reach out and enjoy my company – just as I would theirs??

When you follow someone on Twitter or friend someone on FaceBook, do you give good thought to the reasons behind the follow or is it just to have some cool names on your list?

Discuss…

How to Make Twitter Work for You

by Deborah Ng

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past year or so, you probably already know I’m a self-professed Twitter addict. I love Twitter. I Tweet as soon as I wake in the morning, throughout the day, and just before I go to bed. In fact, I check Twitter almost as much as I check my email and stats. Am I obsessed? Not really, it’s my job to use Twitter. Besides, Twitter has done amazing things for my blogs.

Twitter Feed

I’ve been using Twitter Feed for my blogs. What I like about it is how posts are automatically tweeted out everyday, even if I didn’t do it manually, and even if I didn’t write the post myself. Anything on my RSS Feed is sent out over my Twitter Feed.

I hesitated for some time before using Twitter feed because I was worried about the spam factor, so far no one complained. Moreover, traffic from twitter to FWJ is way up.

Network

My favorite reason to use Twitter is to network. I started out with one follower and now have about 1200. I met new people, did some business, swapped ideas and stories, and received breaking news. Because Twitter is 140 characters or less, I’m not committed to some deep conversation. Read more