The Benjamin Franklin Quote Desktop Ornament |
There is a great pleasure in this for me. Mostly, I do it for myself. I write because I have to or want to. I am never sure which, but most certainly a combination of wanting to and having to. I also write to keep in touch with friends and family. So, I do want others to read what I have written and appreciate an audience as much as the next person.
When I was part of BNI during the Great Recession, we had a secret Santa and my secret Santa gave me a paperweight or desk ornament with a quote from Benjamin Franklin: "Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." I love this quote from the great statesman, scientist, and philosopher. I am, especially at my current age, on the "write something worth reading" side of this scale.
I have wanted to be published. I not only want to publish a book but I want to publish several. I would settle for self-published but prefer to get paid for it. I would love to be a Sydney Harris. I would love to have books of poems published and several novels. In short, I would love to generate some revenue, part of my salary from writing. Last year, my worst year of blogging, I would have said it is a pipe dream. This year I am feeling more energized about it and ready to think about doing something about.
Note: I did say I am ready to think about doing something about it. I often use a quote/motto when I am writing or thinking about weight loss and control. "Knowing never equals doing." I would modify that quote in the case of self-publishing: "Aspiring never equals doing either."
I do have four volumes of poetry, countless haikus beyond that, and the entire body of work in this blog to work on. Three favorite MBA students of mine were not overly impressed with the textbook we used in a graduate operations management course in the term that just ended. I had them read some of my professional blogs as part of the course. All three have been pushing for me to write my own course materials and eventually textbooks of my own. Of course, they are right.
Why haven't I done these yet? Self-publishing a book of poems or the best of this blog is a simple matter of cutting, pasting, formatting, creating a table of contents, some cover art, and such. The writing of the material is done and has been done for years. Oh yes, my friend Gian insists that I would have to have it all proofread and edited as I am prone to posting items with spelling and grammatical errors in them.
I know I have used that Benjamin Franklin quote before in a posting. Sure enough, a blogger search revealed that I used it a post from March 4, 2013, almost five years ago, titled Not Quitting. There was another great quote I used in that piece:
A Professional Writer is
an Amateur Writer
Who Didn't Quit.
I do need to do this. Maybe I should push myself to publish a book of poems or haikus along with the Best of This Side of Fifty in 2019. That sounds like a wonderful resolution for the coming year.
Methinks I just created my first resolution for 2019.
I really enjoyed reading this one, as I can relate. I have been doing writing in my free time for a few years and have gotten better each story. I do publish some of my stories, but the context that process is a bit more complicated for me to explain here. The quotes you used here are very appropriate. I have a friend who also writes, so I will pass this blog onto him. He will appreciate the contents as much as I do.
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