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I will do my best to answer in a way that advances the cause of awesomeness. Your awesomeness.
Thank you.
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The queue is empty.
Send a question to dennis.cass<at>gmail.com or leave a note in the comments.
I will do my best to answer in a way that advances the cause of awesomeness. Your awesomeness.
Thank you.
I’ve been doing some unpleasant networking lately, and, generally: How much should you really invest in kissing the ass of people you don’t like?
I mean, there are a lot of people more powerful than me who I need to open doors. So, I do everything I can to curry their favor. And yet, I’ve noticed in life that I get a lot farther when I network with people I genuinely like, I suspect that is because they genuinely like me too. A lot of my networking with people I, deep down, dislike, seems to peter off into not much. This could be because I actually am pretty high in my career and there’s not a lot of easy places to move forward, or it could be because it’s a waste of time to network with people you’re not really simpatico with.
Your thoughts? Is all networking good networking, or is there a way to network smarter?
Question: “Awesome” here means (roughly) “successful,” no?
If so, success on whose terms? Our own? The world’s? Our friends’/families’/SOs’? Is it up to us, the awesome-to-be, to decide for ourselves whose yardstick to use?
Let’s say that “being more awesome” might include reaching a broader audience. Is that good enough? Should we add the phrase “…with that audience’s approbation or otherwise willing attention”?
I’m not sure if that’s one question or, like, eight or ten.
Thanks to both of you. Both excellent questions and I’m on them like something on something else.
Ok, at the risk of another over my head, costume-filled, insidery, confusing to poor dumbheads like me riddle–
What ever happened to that whole “there’s a better way to get published than querying” thing???
You’re right, pseudosu. That thread got dropped in the move. I will pick it back up.
As a writer trying to transition from the blogosphere to the publication-osphere, how does one navigate both worlds at once?
Specifically: I have always used my blog to gauge reactions to various experiments and writing styles, and I enjoy the immediate feedback inherent to self-publishing. My first instinct upon doing anything I’m proud of is to put it on my blog, and it’s a great motivator to keep producing content. But if I want to submit a story to a magazine, it’s likely that they’re going to want first publishing rights.
My blog isn’t particularly high traffic, so it seems silly that it would immediately disqualify a piece from more “real” publication: but apparently it does. (I’ve double-checked with a few publications, and even super small out-of-mom’s-basement kinds of publications take themselves so seriously.)
Am I missing something? Or is this just an awkward phase in the adolescent struggle between the virtual and tangible worlds? Do I prioritize a magazine who won’t get back to me for six months, tolerate simultaneous submissions, or even pay me *if* they publish my work — or do I damn The Man, throw the thing online and bask in immediate satisfaction?