Writing is your business: justify the investment

Zemanta offered this image up in response to my blog post. I love it! Could anything (even writing) be more fanciful than selling balloons on the street? How is that somehow more acceptable than investing in a writing business? | BALLOON SALESMAN ON SOUTH SIDE CHICAGO’S 47TH STREET MANY OF THE CITY’S BLACK BUSINESS OWNERS STARTED WITH… – NARA – 556217 (Photo and description credit: Wikipedia)

Did you know 50 to 70 percent of small businesses fail within the first 18 months? I am curious as to how that statistic stacks up in the entrepreneur–writer world. How many would-be writers give up within the first 18 months?

Have you ever considered taking time off work to write? Did you then decide not to because you couldn’t “afford it?” How do you justify the time spent on an activity that may or may not pay out in the long term? Well, let me ask you this: How do most small business owners justify the time and expense sunk into the more than half a million small businesses opened in the U.S. each year? When you consider the odds, how can anyone believe they can afford to open a small business?

How to self-publish your novel

Today’s print-on-demand technology allows you the option of printing one book or a thousand. | An on-demand book printer at the Internet Archive headquarters in San Francisco, California. Two large printers print the pages (left) and the cover (right) and feed them into the rest of the machine for collating and binding. Depending on the number of pages in a given book, it might take from 5 to 20 minutes to print. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yesterday I attended a seminar on self-publishing with author/publisher Cornel Rosario at my local technical college. I have been doing a lot of research on publishing recently and wanted to see if there was anything new he could teach me that I hadn’t figured out yet on my own. I am glad I did. Prior to the class, I had learned a lot about ebook publishing, but the process of publishing actual books had been a bit of a mystery to me.

Much of the information Rosario covered in this three-hour session was old news to me, as far as ebooks go. But when it comes to printing actual books, he was a wealth of knowledge on both old-fashioned printing and print-on-demand. I also learned a lot about the costs associated with publishing your own book.

Eat outside at Mullin’s Drive In, Fox Lake, WI

The car hops at Mullin’s Drive In restaurant in Fox Lake, Wisconsin take your order at your picnic table and bring your food to you. No standing in line like most summer burger stands!

On our way home from Amish country Saturday, my SignifO and I decided we wanted to have lunch at some kind of small, family-owned restaurant rather than the usual boring chain. So, when we came across Mullin’s Drive In, located in Fox Lake, WI, we had to stop and eat.

Mullin’s sign boasts their car hops come to your car to take your order, but that’s not all. The property includes a large yard full of picnic tables where patrons can take a seat in the shade while car hops take their orders table-side. A car hop/waitress greeted us as we exited our vehicle and directed us to take any table we liked, and she would be right with us.

Just like at an indoor sit-down restaurant, the waitresses at Mullin’s Drive In will bring your food right to your table.

The nerve of some people’s kids

Einkaufswagen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s funny how a random comment from a complete stranger can ruin a fun family outing.

Yesterday, I was pushing my 5-year-old around in a shopping cart in the garden section at Wal-mart looking for flowers to plant in our garden. It was a beautiful sunny day, around 70 degrees, and we had decided it was time to get a couple of plants in the ground. My younger son loves to help me out in the garden, so this was a perfect opportunity for the 2 of us to spend some one-on-one time together while his older brother was at a friend’s house.

Dear potential employer who just asked for my Facebook password,

Image via CrunchBase

Dear potential employer* who just asked for my Facebook password,

I am going to do you a huge favor and deny your request. You see, it is illegal for you to ask me in an interview how old I am, if I have any kids, what my religion is, or whether I like boys or girls.

Did you know you can easily access all of this information about me simply by reviewing my personal Facebook profile? By complying with your request to log in to my personal Facebook account, I would be opening you up to a huge lawsuit that would likely ensue once I realize that you considered my age/religion/sexual preference when deciding whether or not to hire me. 

I’ve decided to write an ebook

I like to build websites. No, I am not a website designer. I have a basic understanding of HTML, but I am in no way “experienced” with it. The type of websites I like to build are WYSIWYG websites like those you can create for free using Weebly.com and similar content management systems (CMS). These systems are so easy to use, I don’t know why every small business or non-profit doesn’t have a website. But then again, I guess they probably don’t have a thorough understanding of how best to set up a simple site in a way that will draw traffic. Maybe they think it’s too complicated to even think about doing it themselves. I think they’re wrong. So, I thought maybe I’d write an ebook about it.

9:30 a.m. is a magical time of day for me

Image via Wikipedia

No matter how hard I try, I can’t possibly be productive before 9:30 a.m.

It never fails, every morning I find myself looking at the clock at 9:30 a.m. and realizing that I am, once again, just now getting down to business.

I don’t think it’s just because I get to work from home most days and can take my time showering, getting a cup of coffee, throwing a load of laundry in the wash, and just generally screwing around until I feel like accomplishing something. When I had a full-time day job where I had to actually be someplace at a certain time, I was still incapable of accomplishing anything before 9:30 a.m.

Poetry Friday: Saturday Scratch-off

Image via Wikipedia

For this week’s Poetry Friday, hosted by Hey, Jim Hill!, I am sharing an original poem about a little girl and her grandmother:

Saturday Scratch-off

Come on, Grandma! Catch up!

I scamper ahead on
ice-slicked concrete. I am
impatient. She’s slower
than wiggly gummy worms
that will slither down my
throat on the way home from
the Stop-n-Go.