Thursday, Jan 25, 2024
A day of subtle changes 11 months until Christmas!
There are changes on the horizon. Especially for this site. First, thank you so much for being subscribed or even just following me and reading here. I am hoping to make a couple of changes, and hope you will give me feedback regarding your opinions, I think there is a place to comment at the bottom.
A Quick History of How I’m Here.
I have been a real estate broker for four decades, working in a slightly different manner, in which, if a home-seller wanted to sell their own house, I would put it in the MLS for them to get the exposure.
PRO-TIP: Whenever somebody says “long story short,” that means they, themselves realize it is going to be so long, you’d gnaw off your own foot to get away from that trap.
Long story short, I was halfway talked into making a book of the stuff I used to present at the prospects’ kitchen tables. I did. I self-published. It felt good. I did it again. It still felt good. I did it a lot.
One day a couple of years ago, I stumbled across some articles by August Birch and he convinced me that I should publish some of my stuff on Medium. In fact his article convinced me I should write to make some money.
At first, I wrote stories about almost anything and had a lot of fun and made a buck or two. I also began my learning curver Medium, where I tried to learn all I could about making money on there. now two years and nearly 1000 articles later, I am having a nagging thought.
The Medium writers making the most money were usually the ones writing “how-to” stories on how to make money writing. I tried to go back to writing fun and amusing stuff and it was not that well received.
I think about my favorite authors like Steinbeck, Hemingway, Mark Twain and Douglas Adams. I try to imagine them in writing school, but I can’t. I try to imagine Douglas Adams writing on the Double Negative at the End of the Universe. None of them work. They wrote to let us be entertained, not to make an ethical bribe to get subscribers. They were their own ethical bribe.
I have tried for a while, publishing a story on Medium and then publishing the first part of it here for free to see if my Medium reads increased. No such luck.
Therefore I have decided to not try to continue to compete in the world of making money on Medium or by any other tempting trickery.
I believe that I am here to entertain and encourage, so my writing here will be on that topic. I may, from time to time, write about writing but only as it pertains to me.
I am still struggling with the frequency of the letter since only a handful come here on their own to read all the articles, but many more read them if they are sent by email. I may publish some of my coming medium stories here, and I may publish some of these stories on Medium.
Thanks for listening to me ramble on. The following section will be about me.
Just for housekeeping, I have some books out. They can be found at Amazon here and who knows where else in eBook form. I will try to organize all that directly.
Most of them are not very good. They are non-fiction, many about real estate. I am currently trying my hand at writing short stories. I’ll keep you posted.
I would love it if some more of you would volunteer to be advanced readers. I would give you a new book free and would ask in return, for an unbiased comment I could print.
Also, I would like to ask another favor of you, to help me build subscribers to this letter. I intend to start looking around at traditional publishing sometime, so I will be talking to literary agents and they are kinder to authors who have a lot of subscribers.
At this point, you are probably saying to yourself “It’s just all about him. isn’t it?”
Well, the answer is no. This letter is Absolutely free. The books I write, I make free for certain periods.
Last Thoughts
Three things would help me a lot.
Advance reader volunteers.
Help me get more subscribers.
Follow an occasional free link to finish a story on Medium, when you have the time.
Please remember, that I am still trying to learn what I am doing here. If there are some things you want more of or less of, just tell me rather than unsubscribing, this, of course, is always your option, no matter how hurtful it is to me.