I’m now LinkedIn

Having joined LinkedIn to help me give this whole experiment a boost, I’m now pushed in another direction with this blog and this website. The goal is the same, to secure an agent to represent my writing, but now I think I’ll have two different audiences for a bit of a time.

Up until now I’ve been writing for the group of people I know to be regularly visiting and reading. While I think a lot of it is in my head–their half centered on my thoughts of how they will receive my writing–we have a dialog established, toward which I write.

These people basically know what I’ve got going on, what my life is like as well as the writing I’m doing and my goals for it. It’s nice and comfortable. Many of the readers are people I see regularly, and there’s just an easy flow to it all. There’s a certain shorthand I know I can use with them, which I now feel I have to abandon for the new readers created by the LinkedIn connections. (Ain’t nobody likes them people, anyway.)

But that’s the thing. I like them. I love them. Most of the connections I’ve made–and there haven’t been many in those eight or so hours, which included four and a half hours of sleep–have been old friends that I haven’t spoken with in a decade or so. So being, I do want to catch them up on what all is going down and just what my intentions and hopes are for this website; that will mean the ongoing dialog of the blog will have to be divided.

I don’t like that. It’s not that I don’t like the thought of catching these people up; I’d love to have all of the time in the world for what all that might require. The thought I don’t care for is that I might have to take time away from the already established flow. I’m heartened by the thought that it shouldn’t be too long before we’re all caught up at the same place.

For the readers who get here via LinkedIn–all of whom have some potential to help my career; this ain’t no social site for me–I’m going to give you a quick overview and then point you to some of the previous posts.

I’m really making the push to transitioning out of tending bar and into full time writing. Four years of sobriety have led me to really begin stockpiling work, and 24 years or so after I began on this journey I can stand back and see that I’ve really gotten a good deal accomplished.

The central focus of that work at present, and the piece upon which I’m hoping to secure and agent, is a novel titled The Situation with Phillip. You can read about the progress of that process in the posts under that category heading. There is a synopsis there, which will bring the work into focus.

Aside from that, in the last four years I’ve written a nonfiction memoir, which is essentially a novel-length collection of letters to my sons, ten and six, about the men they’re going to need to be in this world. I’ve also written a full-length play, which is titled The Way Men Love. Another novel, The Beautiful Putrescence, is in the works. It is longer and much more secular than Phillip, and I even began it long before, but that was before I knew how to write a novel and when I still had so much chaff standing in the way of my writing time.

That’s not the way it is these days. These days, I’m on it, and if the Lord wills things to keep rolling they way they are, I won’t be getting off it.

So, that’s where we are just now. I queried the novel out a couple of weeks ago, and I received a prompt and personal rejection. For those who may not know, that’s a good thing. The agent took the time to type out a personalized 112-word message–you better believe I counted==to give me some pointers that I really needed.

The most important thing he told me was to get involved in social media sites and chat rooms that writers, editors, and agents frequent. So, here I am.

Bear with me folks; I’m just learning it as I go. The good thing for us is that I’ve been going for a while now.

Love, thanks, and prayers from here.